“You get a reaction and you get a reaction and you get a reaction!” shouted Oprah in the almost inevitable meme that’ll be generated by Facebook’s announcement that it’s rolling out the Reactions feature it’s been testing in half a dozen countries since last year to all of its users. The announcement came earlier today in a post to Facebook’s newsroom by product manager at the social network, Sammi Krug.
Now, instead of merely offering a “Like” for a post — which can be pretty awkward if the post in question is, say, announcing the demise of a beloved family pet — you can hold down the like button on mobile (or hover over it on a laptop or desktop browser) and select from the following options “Like”, “Love”, “Haha”, “Wow”, “Sad”, or “Angry”.
It’s a sensible choice to go with Haha, the contemporary version of the original LOL, which grandparents the world over used erroneously for years thinking it meant lots of love. “We had to put Fido down today. LOL.”
Krug says Facebook’s decided on the new Reactions following “more than a year” of “international research” to find out what sorts of reactions people were most likely to want and use. “We also looked at how people are already commenting on posts and the top stickers and emoticons as signals for the types of reactions people are already using to determine which reactions to offer.”
If you need us, we’ll be trawling Mark Zuckerberg’s page so we can react with a “Wow” to the deeply unsettling pic below that he shared from Barcelona’s Mobile World Conference this week during Samsung’s event announcing its new handsets and 360-degree camera. Only because there isn’t, as yet, an “Eek” reaction.
