Everything You Need To Know About "Reactions"; Facebook's Latest Feature

It's been a month since Mark Zuckerberg announced Facebook's plans to roll out a "dislike" button of some sort. 

Now the company are testing a feature with users in Ireland and Spain. It's called "reactions" and it brings in six cartoon emoji you can use in responding to friends' posts: love, haha, yay, wow, sad, and angry. Posts now show reaction counts alongside the number of comments — 10 likes, four wows, two hahas, etc.

Here's what you should know: 

Facebook users wanted more than just the like - they constantly filed bug reports about it. They wanted an expanded range of emotions. After all, when your friend's cat dies, you don't really want to 'like' their status..

Facebook decided on its initial set of reactions by scanning users' one-word comments. 

Facebook also tracked the emotional sentiments of the sticker comments users were leaving on friends' posts. 

The reason the feature is rolling out to Spaniards and the Irish because they have no friends in other countries. Testing a feature like reactions with small groups is tricky. If I can react to your post with a haha, but you can't see my haha because you're not in the test group, Facebook is effectively broken. That's why Facebook tests features in countries where most of its users don't have friends outside the country. Ireland and Spain are relatively isolated in this way, and that's why they're getting reactions first.

People actually didn't really want a dislike button. "Dislike" turns out to be less useful than it first appears, because it's not specific enough. If you see something sad, you could dislike it, but people are actually more likely to send sympathy. Likewise if you're angry at a post, you're more likely to use an anger emoji and words rather than just a 'dislike'.

Source