Sometime last Thursday they arrived. Facebook reactions exploded onto Irish and Spanish news feeds. People were delighted, not only were they using them with abandon but status updates were full of chatter about them.
I’d love to say that I stood back and watched but I was blown away too. There’s something about a yellow smiley face that is almost irrisistable. Five days on we’ve calmed down a bit. I still find myself thinking before I click Like, do I really just Like it or do I want to express something else. Novelty as well as the wish to be more expressive with my Like drives me to keep using them.
Here’s my reaction:
As you may have guessed, I think they are a success. I do wonder if will we continue to use them in the long run. I also wonder if the small selection of emotions that they allow me is enough. Too much choice would mean I wouldn’t use them but I’d really like a hug emotion added.
For Facebook pages we may see an increase in interactions, if people enjoy expressing themselves more perhaps they will interact with our posts more. I’ve seen nothing of the sort on my page yet but I can see it working well for consumer focussed business.
I particularly like that none of the reactions represent a down vote. That sort of system could be so easily abused. So page owners don’t fret, whichever emotion your followers choose will count as a positive interaction.
What do you think?
I’m a fan of Reactions but not everyone agrees. What do you think? Will you use them or are they a fad?
Get a headstart on Google Analytics 4 & understand the lingo with the GA4 phrase book
I like them too. I particularly prefer that you can use an emoticon like “sad” or “angry” when reacting to sad or bad news. Clicking “like” for those sorts of posts just seemed a bit wrong!
I’d like a dislike emote of some kind, but I also agree with your point, it could very easily be abused by trollers. I think “angry” is going to end up used quite a lot on business pages/adverts as the closest thing to a “dislike” button 😉
Yes, you’re not the first person who’s told me people will use angry like that! There is always the option to hide posts from the page when you don’t like something, this has a negative effect on the content from the page in the future. I know a lot of users might not know either how to do it or the effect it has but it’s the equivalent of the dislike button.
Sadly by clicking ‘angry’ you’ll just end up seeing more from the page in future. This is probably something Facebook needs to think about…