Last week Facebook FINALLY released a wider range of emotions for users to express themselves. We all know the arguments for the dislike button, so why Reactions instead?
Facebook recognised that not all posts are inherently likeable. Think about the times you’ve come across a post from a friend lamenting the passing of a pet, getting fired, or moaning about their bad day, not to mention the huge number of posts from consumers complaining to big businesses. Not really, likeable, yeah?
Reactions have already proven, in the last few days at least, to somewhat improve the accuracy of users’ feelings towards a post. Now we’ve got “Like”, “Love”, “Haha”, “Wow”, “Sad” and “Angry”.
Not exactly the “Dislike” button, which Mark Zuckerberg has made pretty clear won’t be happening, but certainly a step towards allowing us more emotional expression, right?
I’m sure you’re thinking though, do people even have time to be bothered selecting a certain emotion? Maybe not for every post they come across, but for posts they feel really passionate about, holding down the button for a second or two and selecting the corresponding emotion isn’t too much of a stretch. Facebook was cautious not to give users too many options, lest our attention span waned. Or is it because human expression is limitless and it’s not physically possible to list the number of emotions a user may have in reaction to a certain post?
Nevertheless, I’d say what they’ve come up with is a relatively good balance, given written communication can never fully express the emotions and intuition derived from physical, face-to-face human interaction.
As Mark Zuckerberg said himself:
“Not every moment you want to share is happy. Sometimes you want to share something that is sad or frustrating… The result is reactions, which allow you to express love, laughter, surprise, sadness or anger. Love is the most popular reaction so far, which feels about right to me!”
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