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Business News/ Mint-lounge / Features/  Facebook Reactions: no dislike button
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Facebook Reactions: no dislike button

It's testing a set of six emojis in addition to the Like emoticon

Photo: Courtesy TechcrunchPremium
Photo: Courtesy Techcrunch

In September, Facebook chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg had said the social network was looking to add emotions to the “Like" button that accompanies all posts by users. It was immediately assumed that there would be a “Dislike" button. However, we are now getting a clearer picture of what Facebook is planning. While no official announcement has been made, technology website Techcrunch says there will actually be a set of six emojis in addition to the Like emoticon.

Called Reactions, the set will include Love, Haha, Yay, Wow, Sad and Angry, allowing users to better define their emotions about a friend’s post. As a user, you click on the Like button and it’ll throw up these options. At present, Reactions is being rolled on a trial basis for users in Spain and Ireland. There is, however, no guarantee that this is how the feature will be rolled out globally, if at all.

The fact is that Facebook has narrowed down on these particular emojis after understanding the sort of replies friends usually post on a person’s updates. Facebook has also been analysing the use of emoticons in the Messenger app, which gave it a fairly good idea of the ones that are popular among users in general.

A lot of Web users prefer to “react" with emoticons, as a sort of visual response to what they feel about a particular post or message. Which is why emoticons are the very first feature that Instant Messenger apps bolt on to the app.

“We didn’t want to just build a Dislike button because we don’t want to turn Facebook into a forum where people are voting up or down on people’s posts. That doesn’t seem like the kind of community we want to create," Zuckerberg had said last month. With the entire concept of trolling on social media keeping Facebook on its toes, it cannot be seen doing anything that will lead to users turning off and reducing Facebook usage.

The new Reactions will be available on individual user posts as well as on “pages". Just the way we currently see the number of Likes on a post, we will now see a break-up of all the Reactions. This new feature will appear on smartphone apps as well as desktop versions. However, it is not clear whether such a feature will also be added to the Facebook Messenger app in future.

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Published: 09 Oct 2015, 05:40 PM IST
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