If you’ve spent any time on Facebook recently, you’ve likely
noticed that your timeline has gotten a whole lot cuter thanks to the addition
of five new emojis that have replaced the old-school ‘Like’ button.
Welcome to Facebook Reactions.
Facebook has been testing the feature around the world for
the last several months and users have been getting their first glimpses the
past few weeks. While Reactions seems like an innocent enough feature, many
marketers have some questions about how, exactly, it’s going to affect their
marketing endeavors. Here’s what you need to know.
What is Reactions?
Reactions is pretty simple – it’s an extension of the
Facebook ‘Like’ button. Before the introduction of Reactions, Facebook users
could simply like, share or comment on a post. Now, users can hover over the
“Like” button to reveal five emojis meant to convey different reactions to a
piece. In addition to the “like” emoji, Facebook is now offering “love,” “wow,”
“haha,” “angry,” and “sad.”
Why Does Reactions Matter?
While Reactions may seem like a somewhat arbitrary addition
to Facebook, the mission to build the feature has been in the works for a
little over a year. Facebook chose to add Reactions in order to provide its
users with a more complex way to interact with Facebook posts. In a statement
released on Facebook on Feb. 24, Mark Zuckerberg said, “Not every moment you
want to share is happy…Our community has been asking for a dislike button for
years…People wanted to express sympathy and…share a wider range of emotions.”
Before Reactions was introduced, people who wanted to
interact with a Facebook post in a way other than ‘liking’ it had to type a
comment on the story. This doesn’t seem like a huge inconvenience, until you
take into account that 90 percent of the people who access Facebook on a daily
and monthly basis do so from a mobile platform. While typing a comment may be
no big deal on a laptop, it’s a different ball game on a phone’s tiny screen –
especially for users attempting to engage in a conversation or share deep
feelings about a piece. In light of this, Facebook realized that its huge
mobile user base needed a nuanced way to interact with content and Reactions
was born.
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