Facebook Makes It Easier To Love, Wow and Be Angry

Facebook has finally expanded the world of the Like. With the public introduction of Facebook Reactions, the 1.5 billion user king of social media networks just unlocked the ability of its users to offer more low-effort expressions to anything they encounter on their News Feed.

There has been pressure on Mark Zuckerberg’s platform to give users more options to quickly respond to the posts for years, whether the content is from friends, media or brands. The ability to write a response in text was always there but the desire to give users a quicker, mobile-friendly option and the increasing use of Emoji helped drive the change, according to the social media giant’s team.

Sammi Krug, product manager at Facebook, shared the news this morning and comments that Reactions are a result of extensive global research and that their team, “looked at how people are already commenting on posts and the top stickers and emoticons as signals for the types of reactions people are already using to determine which reactions to offer.” 

The full list of Reactions are shown above. The “Like” is now joined by its stronger brother, “Love” as well as “Haha,” “Wow,” “Sad,” and “Angry”. While a “Dislike” button has been requested for many years and it was hinted at in the past, Mark Zuckerberg and team have avoided adding that directly negative response from the list, which would have turned the platform into an Up/Down voting tool not unlike Reddit.

Ayzenberg’s Social Media Strategist for Facebook, Erik Schmitt, believes Reactions will open the door to more and better engagement on the platform. “As Zuckerberg said, the ‘Like’ isn’t enough – it’s ambiguous. Emoji are fine but there are so many different sets and they can overwhelm casual users. Reactions allow for a frictionless way to get more meaningful and quicker interactions happening on Facebook.”

Reactions are easy to use on mobile and desktop devices alike. Hovering over the Like button will display your options on the desktop, while holding down the button on mobile will display the reaction list now available. Reactions are available worldwide now but mobile users will need to update the Facebook app to gain access to the new functionality.

Do you know the value of social media endorsements? How will Reactions change the way we value Facebook actions? The opportunity to learn more about the Earned Media Value of social and digital actions is coming on March 2^nd. Sign up for Ayzenberg’s webinar on the subject and get the new Earned Media Value Index, which will be available immediately following the show.