Facebook have finally revealed their solution to the on-going “dislike button” saga, and there is no dislike option in sight.
In September, Zuckerberg finally announced that Facebook had caught on to the overwhelming calls imploring the social networking website to introduce a dislike option, and claimed that they are working on a solution.
Even then, Zuckerberg alluded to the fact that the solution wouldn’t be an out-an-out Dislike option, since he didn’t want to turn the site into a voting system where someone could upvote or downvote a particular post on the site. Instead Zuckerberg claimed the solution would allow users to express empathy on posts where a Like didn’t really seem appropriate.
Well the beta version of this solution has arrived and it’s called ‘Reactions’, currently only available to users in Spain and Ireland, and it’s actually going to be a whole bunch of options (none of which is a Dislike option) that users can click on instead of being limited to just the Like option.
Currently the options available on Reactions will be a Love option, a Funny (laughter) option, a Yay option, a Shocked option, a Sad option and finally an Angry Option. And yes, the ubiquitous Like option will remain present. Whether all of these options survive beta testing remains to be seen, as does whether Facebook will add any additional options, which seems pretty likely in the future.
Of course as you can surmise from the product images above, the “Reactions” feature is clearly based on the popular Emoticons (Emojis) that have become a staple part of the Internet and available on practically every platform where you can comment or post your own content.
A couple of interesting facts that we’ve gleaned so far…
Why Spain and Ireland for the trials?
Because giving some Facebook users an option that others don’t have is difficult. User A can “Yay” User B’s post but not the other way around can be troublesome. Facebook stats show that Spanish and Irish users tend not to have as many friends from other countries as others, so they make better “closed groups” to test new features on.
Why those particular 6 emojis?
Because Facebook know that those are the options that people regularly respond with. One word text comments were counted and analysed, as well as the way Facebook users utilised the “Sticker” feature introduced last year, to see the most popularly used emotions people can currently only express in words.
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From the short demonstration video posted online already, it is clear that mobile users can simply long-hold the Like button to see the other options pop-up, and the count for each option on a post is visible at the bottom of the post, much like you can see the Like count on a post at the bottom already.
This is certainly one of the biggest changes to such a visible feature on Facebook for a while. The Like button has been around for as long as Facebook, and this introduction is a massive adjustment in terms of the interface too. And if the tests go well in Ireland and Spain, expect to see the Reactions feature coming to your phone, tablet or computer sometime soon.
What do you think of the Reactions feature? Let us know below.
