On the 24th of February 2016 Facebook confused us all for a few seconds as they told us to “Press and Hold the Like Button to see all reactions”. Hallelujah!
Let’s face it, something had to change. With the crying with laugher face being the biggest emoji of 2015 over 1,500 million users were craving a little more than a thumbs up from our favourite social platform. Social media is becoming more emotional as whole, from language to political campaigns, stories and jokes - meaning the little thumbs up was becoming too vague and hollow.. a touch insensitive for bad news.
This latest update was announced by Zukerberg last night -
“Today is our worldwide launch of Reactions -- the new Like button with more ways to express yourself.
Not every moment you want to share is happy. Sometimes you want to share something sad or frustrating. Our community has been asking for a dislike button for years, but not because people want to tell friends they don't like their posts. People wanted to express empathy and make it comfortable to share a wider range of emotions.
I've spent a lot of time thinking about the right way to do this with our team. One of my goals was to make it as simple as pressing and holding the Like button.
The result is Reactions, which allow you to express love, laughter, surprise, sadness or anger.
Love is the most popular reaction so far, which feels about right to me!”
REACTIONS TO REACTIONS
Predictably the reactions to reactions have been mixed so far, with some people worried that too much choice will stop them from reacting at all (eh hem.. the classic like button is still available). There will always be naysayers (sadness) but we are enjoying those celebrating all the love in the world.
As an agency and an attention agency at that, a deeper understanding of the type of reaction we are getting from audiences is really exciting for us. Are the best posts the funny ones or the sad ones? How do we really make sure an audience feels the love?
Sentiment tracking is perfect for this but until now it has all been speculation and guesswork. Facebook reactions will be a game changer - instead of the algorithms trying to understand sentiment, confusing sarcasm and struggling with the human language - reactions will allow more emotional social sign posting for a much more accurate understanding of the social tribe.
Reactions will develop more intelligent interactions - allowing people to reach out not just with laughter, love and likes, but also sadness and anger. Though saying that we aren’t all robots yet, is the Facebook WOW reaction a good “wow” or a bad “wow”
DEADPOOL JUMPS ON THE OSCARS
Our favourite reaction today? Deadpool extending the cinema experience on the dawn of oscar weekend - we can keep laughing at Deadpool’s awesome marketing now and he knows it - “HaHa”
