After months of testing, Facebook finally unveils its new Like button. The update includes four new reactions – Love, Haha, Wow, Sad, and Angry – that are now available to all users.
To use reactions, users simply hold down the Like button on the app or hover over it on a desktop to view all options and tap on the one desired to post. Users will also be able to see how many people have interacted with the post just as was possible with the previous Like button.
The change is not something Facebook took lightly; more than a year of research and experimentation elapsed before the social media platform elected to roll out the reactions feature. Much of this time was spent determining what, if anything, is missing from the old like button, and how can it be improved. Although users have been asking for a dislike button for a while, CEO Mark Zuckerberg, said there should be more nuanced reactions than “dislike.”
“We totally understand that the Like button is incredibly iconic, it’s been doing great things for Facebook for the last seven years,” said Facebook Product Manager Sammi Krug.
Throughout the research, the largest consideration stemmed from finding universal sentiments that would be easy to translate across cultural boundaries. The feature launched as a prototype in Spain, Portugal, Chile, Japan, and Columbia before being introduced to the rest of the world.
Adding new reactions, or placing them in more places still hasn’t been ruled out. Krug said the company is learning more and more about how people use the feature.
As for the most popular reaction, Love takes the top spot and is widely used consistently in all countries.
Source: Mashable
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