Facebook launches reaction feature: Love stands out as popular

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Facebook adds Reaction features

…WSJ warn: use caution on the new features

Facebook adds Reaction features
Facebook’s new reaction extensions

Facebook’s ‘Reactions’ feature offering 5 new options alongside the usual ‘Like’ button has been launched worldwide including Malawi, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO for the company has said.

In announcing the global rollout on Wednesday, Mr.  Zuckerberg said the new feature allows users to express love, laughter, surprise, sadness or anger.

“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” he said.

Among the 5 reactions, love was the most popular reaction during the 24 hour rollout phase. To add a reaction, hold down the Like button on mobile or hover over the Like button on desktop to see the reaction image options, then tap either Like, Love, Haha, Wow, Sad or Angry.

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) has described the new reaction features as “small buttons with big impact”, urging people to use caution on the new features.

“These small buttons have big social implications. Reducing complex human emotion to a set of Pac-Man faces is dangerous—especially considering how Like-happy we already are….Don’t take them too seriously. At the end of the day, they’re cartoon faces masquerading as human emotions. They’re just buttons, people” reads part of the WSJ article published today.