All kinds of Reactions

All these years, we were left with no second choice on Facebook, but to move the mouse over the thumbs up ‘like’ icon and left click to show what we felt about a post. What Mark Zuckerberg and his roomies meted out more than a decade ago, over time, turned out to be having limited appeal and somewhat irritating to the needs of its ever-growing user community surpassing billions. People clamoured, at least, to have a ‘dislike’ button for they could not equally treat the post of a close buddy with a new car and a gruesome picture from a war-scene with the same ‘liking’.

Finally the hour has arrived for Zuckerberg and team to ‘value’ the emotions and come out with a pack of half-a-dozen Reactions to fill the void.

The ‘mother’ of all Reactions is still the same thumbs up and one has to hover over it to see the six emoji ‘kids’ pop up in a disciplined row. On mobile, hold down the ‘like’ button. Love, haha, wow, sad and angry appear along with the grand-old ‘like’ to release the emotions kept in check so far.

As part of its research, Facebook did a beta run in Spain and Ireland for a year. The newsfeed now shows that a person ‘reacted’ to a post instead of saying he/she liked that. ‘Yay’ was also present in the list first and was later dropped as it was vague and failing to communicate.

A three-day old FB newsroom blog update from Sammi Krug, product manager, reads: “We have been testing Reactions in a few markets since last year, and have received positive feedback so far. Today, we’re excited to offer it to everyone who uses Facebook around the world. We will continue learning and listening to feedback to make sure we have a set of reactions that will be useful for everyone!” Ahem! More up the sleeve

Advertisers and social media data analytics are waiting to see if a well tailored audience response would be possible from here on to boost their market. Some were quick to act and the ad campaigns started inviting ‘love’s for their posts.

Marketers are disappointed on the other hand, which is complemented by the fact that FB algorithm treats all Reactions in the same way as ‘like’ with no classification for each one specifically.