Facebook Reactions Available to Everyone

February 24, 2016

Facebook is set to get even more interactive with the global go-live earlier today of the much-awaited ‘Reactions’.

Facebook users can now choose between a range of emotions – Like, Love, Haha, Wow, Sad and Angry. Despite reported mixed reactions to the new roll-out since their testing period over the last few months, Facebook see their new re-design as a positive step in helping users express their feelings on the social network.

The Like button has been synonymous with Facebook since 2009, when it was activated 5 years after Facebook’s inception. Reactions have now been developed as an extension of the Like button, to express in a little more detail how we feel about what we are reading on our Facebook News Feeds. With the accelerated use of accessing our social media on mobile, a quick and easy way to interact with posts was long overdue. In December 2015 alone, 1.44 billion people accessed Facebook on mobile. Composing reactions in the comments section using the keypad on a mobile is a much more convoluted and time consuming way of getting a point across. Reactions is simple.

Choosing from the vast selection of emoji’s that are already in use has been the biggest consideration for Facebook. But with the most popular symbols analysed and tested on users, prominent emoji’s have been chosen to suit what will work across all cultures and have the same meaning across the globe to all of Facebook’s 1.04 billion daily active users.

Ultimately, if the driving force behind the Reactions move is to increase personalisation and drive engagement, Facebook cannot go wrong with this much-anticipated tweak to their site.