How Facebook narrowed range of human emotions down to six reactions
Facebook is rolling out it's new "Reactions" on Wednesday, a new take on social media's traditional "Like" button.
For the past seven years, Facebook鈥檚 thumbs-up "Like" button has been the only single-click way for users to respond to a post, comment, photo, or article. But when a friend shares a sad or angry post, it usually feels awkward sending a Like their way. The site鈥檚 have long requested a "Dislike" button, but Facebook has continually dodged this initiative finding it too negative.聽
Instead of the old "Like" system, Reactions will offer users six possible responses: Like, Love, Haha, Wow, Sad, or Angry.聽
鈥淲e鈥檝e been listening to people and know that there should be more ways to easily and quickly express how something you see in News Feed makes you feel,鈥� Facebook product manager, Sammi Krug, said in a press release Wednesday. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 why today we are launching Reactions, an extension of the "Like" button, to give you more ways to share your reaction to a post in .鈥澛�
And Reactions has been a long time coming.
鈥淟ike all good design, the process of getting to ,鈥� Geoff Teehan, one of聽Facebook's product design directors wrote in an article for Medium.聽
鈥淲e understand that this is a big change, and want ,鈥� added Mr. Krug in Facebook鈥檚 announcement. 鈥淔or more than a year we have been conducting global research including focus groups and surveys to determine what types of reactions people would want to use most.鈥�
Why so long?
Facebook wanted to get it right, says Julie Zhuo, another of Facebook's product design directors. Not only did the company want to pair down emotions to what users felt were the six most essential, but the company also wanted to create a functional yet visually pleasing display for the additions.聽
Before testing out Reactions in a few select countries, Facebook narrowed down the number of emotions by researching the site鈥檚 top stickers and comments.聽
鈥淔or more than a year, we have been conducting international research to explore what types of reactions people might find appealing,鈥� writes Mr. Teehan. 鈥榊ay鈥� and 鈥楥onfused鈥� were originally in Facebook鈥檚 eight Reactions, but they both got the boot because they were rarely used in testing. Analyzing samples and conducting international surveys 鈥済ave us some of the specific language that people use to express themselves,鈥� adds Teehan.聽
Reactions has been live in Ireland, Spain, and Japan since October. In these early prototypes, Facebook users continued to use "Like" the most, but began to use the new alternatives more frequently over time, Ms. Zhuo told the Associated Press.聽
And then once the reactions and corresponding emojis were decided on, there was the functionality test.聽
鈥淔or instance, a menu might have been harder to find, while offering all six buttons up front might have made it harder to just quickly 鈥榣ike鈥� a post and move on,鈥� explains AP.聽
And Facebook wanted "Like" to remain the focus. Only after hovering over or holding down the "Like" button for a few seconds will the new options appear. To avoid looking cluttered, the News Feed will only show the top three reactions, but both post creators and post viewers can see a full breakdown of all emotional reactions with a click or tap.聽
鈥� because if you don鈥檛 want to use Reactions, you don鈥檛 have to, and there aren鈥檛 six buttons on every post,鈥� explains Tech Crunch鈥檚 Josh Constine.聽
Users鈥� news feeds are already curated based off of past "likes." Eventually, Facebook says it will use all six reactions to formulate news feeds鈥� algorithms.
