I read in USA Today that Facebook just introduced a new set of emoji so you can do more than just “like” a post. Cool. How do I use them?
People have been rallying for “dislike” for a long time, but that’s not what Facebook has rolled out as an upgrade across its 1.5 billion users. Nope, the new kids on the block are “Reactions”, the so-called emoting emoji that give you more options than just “liking” a post that someone has made on the site.
It’s a big step forward for the site because there are plenty of posts you see where “like” is really the wrong sentiment entirely, like a post I just read from a friend about how her daughter had been sick all night and how both of them are now exhausted and feeling sick. Do I want to “like” them being sick? Of course not. Enter the “sad” emoji.
And let me start with a disclaimer: The reactions emoji are currently only available in your Web browser and it’s also being rolled out to Facebook users over the next few weeks, so if you don’t yet have it, patience, try again tomorrow. You will!
Here’s a typical Facebook status update, from my friend Steve. Nothing looks new or unusual about it:
The magic happens when you put your cursor on the “Like” button and leave it there for a moment or two. Up pops the Reactions palette:
That’s cool, eh?
If you move your cursor over one of the emoji, it’ll tell you the emotion that it’s intended to convey:
The full set of Reactions emoticons are: Like, Love, Haha, Wow, Sad, and Angry. Quite possibly the worst bunch of dwarves ever, but it’s still a huge step forward from the rather tired “Like” option.
Once you choose one, it then shows up as your emotional response to that particular post:
Get a bunch of responses and it gets a bit more interesting:
But not only that, you can actually click on the list of people and find out who reacted how:
Apparently I’m the only one who choose the angry icon. Grrr….
More seriously, it’s going to be interesting to see how quickly and widely this is adopted by the Facebook community, but for now, go over to your Facebook page and hover your cursor over a “Like” on a status update (it doesn’t work for comments!) and see what happens.
Then come back and why not follow Ask Dave Taylor on Facebook? Just click!
I have updated my facebook appication but it still does not show these emojis niether it shows on desktop.how can i now update this? And i cant access “on this day” feature as well it still says this is available for some users and its been a year. Everyone has all these features who i know. Please help me
Wow! This is really cool. I don’t think it has been up for Android users yet but well, will try on browser to see this cool new effect.
Thanks for sharing Dave!