Facebook's New Reactions Are Coming 'In The Next Few Weeks'
Jason Lederman
at 08:36 AM Jan 28 2016
Screenshot of Facebook's Reactions feature
Facebook

Last year in October, Facebook's chief product officer Chris Cox announced the social network was finally bringing users a "dislike" button — except, not strictly a dislike button.

Instead, Cox announced the company was testing a new feature called "Reactions", an expansion of the "Like" button that allows users to post six new animated emoji-like faces where the Like button is today, expressing other emotions, including finally "Sad" and "Angry."

Reactions were originally only being tested in only Ireland and Spain, but as of writing this four other countries are now also testing them, including Japan, which got the feature on January 13th.

In a lengthy new article on the feature by Bloomberg, Cox said that Reactions will be coming to the U.S. (and the rest of the world) "in a few weeks," but wouldn't give an exact date. “We roll things out very carefully,” he told Bloomberg. “And that comes from a lot of lessons learned.”

Cox did, however, discuss how and when the new feature was being used. According to him, Reactions were most used after the terrorist attacks in Paris and he said “It just felt different to use Facebook that day."

The ultimate goal, as Bloomberg wrote, is to create "a universal vocabulary that lets people express emotion as they scroll through their feed."

comments powered by Disqus
Filed under:
Sign up for the Pop Sci newsletter
Australian Popular Science
ON SALE 01 FEBRUARY
PopSci Live