Facebook has finally upgraded the Like Button with the addition of six (6) emoji based Reactions.
Yes folks, this is big news, as this has been years in developement. The six emoji that make up Facebook Reactions have rolled out across all platforms, be it desktop or mobile all around the world.
They add meaning to the mere act of liking a post as follows
- Like
- Love
- Haha
- Wow
- Sad
- Angry
So how do you activate the new emojis to express your emotions instead of just liking posts?
How to use Facebook Reactions – Just Long Press or Hover for Six Emotions
To activate Facebook Reactions if you are on your smartphone, long press the “Like” button.
If you are on Facebook on your desktop, simply hover over the traditional “like” icon and the option will appear over your mouse pointer.
Facebook only has six emojis as the majority of the world doesn’t speak English. So after it got the thumbs up from test with their European Facebook users, they launched it to the wider Facebook community, keeping it simple by focusing on emotions that are universal to their 1.55 billion active users.
Interestingly, despite this consideration for international users, use of only six emojis has been criticized as being limited in scope, not to mention upsetting the Grammar Nazis. Also there is still no dislike buttons but at least the Reactions speak Pirate, that is, if you hover over them long enough!
Now all Big Blue needs to do is fix their storage hogging Facebook and Messenger Apps as pointed out in How to stop Facebook and Messenger from draining your battery so I can stop using the Browser so often.
Still, this a good move, as communicating via emotions instead of the cold rational like button truly indicates that we are in the Age of Aquarius.