New Facebook emoticons are coming

Within weeks five new Facebook emoticons will appear to express what your emotions. This will be the end of the era ruled by the ‘traditional’ likes, origo.hu reported.

Facebook is preparing for one of the most significant innovations of recent years. The new reaction icons are coming within weeks. You will be able to use anger, sadness, surprise, laughter and love in addition to the traditional like button when answering your chatmate.

On this occasion product director Chris Cox talked Bloomberg about how they chose the emoticons and why it is hard to change the like button.

Facebook has 1.6 billion users who generate more than 6 billion likes every day. This is more than the number of Google searches. Companies and businesses want to share things that generate as many likes as possible. If the people could not like and comment, fewer users would post and the overall user experience would be compromised, origo.hu wrote.

Like button means self-justification as well. Many people like charity sites to feel they did something good, or they just express their identity by liking music, videos they like, too. In addition you can commit yourself in an online dispute by liking a comment you agree with.

However, there will be no dislike button, because Facebook does not want the users to have a bad time on the community site, since it would be too negative.

According to origo.hu, the company decided in favor of the introduction of reactions. The angry, sad, surprised, laughing and love emoticons were tested in Spain and Ireland last year. Eventually, yay icon will not be included because users do not think it makes much sense. Even sociologists helped Facebook to find the best possible solution.

Another problem was the placement of the new icons. Facebook did not want to make the system too complicated, so Zuckerberg suggested that only the like button should be visible. The other reactions can be used by holding down the like button.

Source: http://www.origo.hu