Wow Facebook! You’ve finally given us the opportunity to express ourselves through more than just a thumbs up! And the world reacts.
We wrote about this back in November 2015 as one of things to watch for on Facebook in 2016, and we’re loving that it’s finally launched! Your newsfeed is where you go every day to catch up with what your friends are up to. Now when we love or hate something someone has posted, instead of expressing a casual thumbs up (or just completely ignoring it) we can choose to love it, laugh at it, wow at it, feel sad by it or show that we’re angry at it.
Those people on Facebook that overly share private thoughts or passively aggressively target one of their friends through a “you know you are” post, may start to find a few angry faces coming their way.
The more angry faces you get, the less likely Facebook will show your content to your friends. And this is the same for business pages too, which means advertising is definitely going to have to get more creative and engaging to avoid those nasty faces! Typically people prefer to complain than reward. Or if you're anything like my friends, they will submit an angry face just to mess with you.
Although Facebook has announced that at the moment it won’t demote posts based on reactions and it will watch out for people trolling. But be warned, it will one day.
But why only these reactions? Why can’t I have a Kimoji style backside? Well, firstly because that’s wildy inappropriate, but secondly because Facebook have been assessing what emoticons and stickers users post on a regular basis. So you never know, if there is a sudden surge of “Kimoji butts”, Facebook could add it in.
You can also express your reaction through your Facebook mobile app by holding down the like button and then choosing which reaction you want. Although at the moment, you can’t seem to like something AND share a reaction. Maybe phase 2 hey Facebook?
These new expressions on Facebook could potentially move on to Instagram, seeing as the Zuckerberg giant owns Instagram, why not roll it out in time on this platform too? Although I personally wouldn’t want to see that. I guess we’ll have to watch this space.
Overall, I think I’ll give Facebook’s new reactions a big heart. From an advertising point of view, it will give us greater insight into what our audiences want to see more and less of. Which could be a good or bad thing…
What do you think? Have you submitted a reaction yet?
Posted 24 February 2016 by Virginia Girtz