All we ever asked Facebook for was a ‘dislike’ button, but they were too worried that if they implemented it it would hurt some people’s feelings real bad – after all, we’re all chasing those ‘Likes’ at the end of the day.

So instead, to soften the blow, Facebook has now rolled out “reaction” buttons. Instead of just clicking ‘Like’ or ignoring / sharing the post, you can now express how you feel.

Long press on the Like button and you’ll now see “love,” “haha,” “wow,” “sad,” and “angry,” and posts will now show the mix of reactions they’ve received.

And while there’s no “dislike” button, as some users have long requested, Facebook says that the new mix of reactions has proven popular with users during testing in Spain and Ireland.

It launched yesterday on iOS, Android, and the web.

The road to these reactionary buttons began last year. A Facebook spokesperson had this to say:

Everyone’s had one of these posts in News Feed where buy tadalafil online they’re like, I want to respond in some way, but ‘like’ doesn’t feel appropriate at all.

To determine an initial set of new reactions, Facebook looked at the one-word comments people left the most on their friends’ posts, as well as analyisng the sentiments in the most popular stickers posted as comments.

Although there has been no information on when South African’s would be presented with the new reaction buttons in order to avoid the phenomenon of ‘liking’ a sad status, Facebook began rolling the options out yesterday.

But to help you find the feature, Facebook will pop up a tip inside the app to show you how it works. People who tested the feature also found it because of the mix of icons that now appears below posts alongside likes.

Facebook’s slowness in introducing the options speaks to the supreme importance of the News Feed in the corporate hierarchy: it’s the part of Facebook users see the most.

[source: theverge]