
Facebook Reactions, the Redesigned Like Button, Is Here - eatonphil
http://www.wired.com/2016/02/facebook-reactions-totally-redesigned-like-button/
======
minimaxir
Anyone remember YouTube's reaction buttons added over _4 years ago_?
[http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2011/06/youtube-
reactions.h...](http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2011/06/youtube-
reactions.html)

And it was killed because no one used it correctly and it made things more
difficult versus a simple like/dislike?

What makes things different now?

~~~
escape_goat
I hadn't remembered them, so I checked your source... they were text counters
with the labels "LOL", "OMG", "EPIC", "CUTE", "WTF", and "FAIL", apparently.
If that was the actual implementation, then I can see several things that are
different. The YouTube reaction button effort seems, in retrospect, to have
made several horrible mistakes. The one that strikes me as a dead-in-the-water
kind of mistake was mediating culturally between the commentator and the
comment in what was probably a misguided attempt to be appealing.

------
rkangel
My favourite part of the whole article is the phrase "Your algorithmically
determined best friends".

------
jaydigital
Interesting point from another Facebook Newsroom post. The News Feed is going
to treat all Reactions as a show of interest. It'll try to show you more of
the things that you react to. So if you click sad on everything, your News
Feed will be sadder than a Nicholas Sparks story.

Link for those interested: [http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2016/02/news-feed-fyi-
what-the-r...](http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2016/02/news-feed-fyi-what-the-
reactions-launch-means-for-news-feed/)

Let me know if I've got it wrong because I'm making this point to everyone I
see.

~~~
jreed91
"Initially" i think is the point you're missing. This is like a trial run to
see how people use it. Once they figure out the weighting I expect changes to
the newsfeed.

------
eatonphil
The large size of the reactions menu feels pretty odd to me. Perhaps they have
been influenced by the large size of emoticons in apps like Katalk and Google
Chat.

Still, my first impression is that it seems like an awkward in-between size:
not conspicuous enough to fit in with the current scale and not large enough
to set itself apart well.

~~~
xemoka
I don't understand why they are so hideous. The colouring doesn't match
Facebook's branding at all, the rounded pop-up box isn't used anywhere else,
and the magnification stretches outside of it.

It looks atrocious. Like they didn't even care to make it look seamless—it's
just a cobbled together add-on.

Or perhaps it speaks to a big UI-style refresh that they're going to roll out?

~~~
thrusong
It definitely feels like they're moving towards a UI refresh just based on
some of the tweaks they've rolled out lately. Besides, they're due for an
overhaul.

------
davidiach
This is a huge change. Relationships have been broken over "likes" in the
past. We invented unwritten rules about what is OK to like and what is not.

I'm really curious how the new additions will change those unwritten rules and
our behavior.

~~~
tdkl
If a relationship breaks over a "like", then it was a shitty relationship
bound to brake anyway.

------
plorg
The way I used to look at it the 'Like' button was intended as a signal of
affirmation to a person than to their comment. That is certainly the way my FB
"Friends" use it. Often other people don't have a perfectly distilled reaction
to something, and the button functions more to say "this affected me" than,
say, "I like your perspective on the President's policy in the Middle East."

The semantics of a button labeled "Like" are certainly a little bit weird. I
obviously don't like the fact that a friend is diagnosed with cancer. But my
friends also don't post "I've got cancer." and leave it at that. People tend
to explain their feelings if they share things like that.

In any case, I'm not sure that Reactions are really much of an improvement. If
my friend says, "I've got cancer, but my doctor says I can beat it. Thank you
for all your support." I think I'd find this new feature confusing. Is it a
"Like" because she has a positive outlook? Is it a "Sad" because cancer is
difficult and stressful? Is it a "Wow" because it's unexpected? Or is it even
an "Angry" because my deity of choice has shown itself to be capricious or
vengeful?

Maybe there's a positive side to this. Maybe it will, unwittingly, encourage
people to attempt to share their feelings and try to process them instead of
just clicking a button.

~~~
matmann2001
Here's something to consider. What if the prior lack of buttons other than
'Like' subconsciously conditioned us to create posts that are 'like'-able?

With a slightly wider spectrum of instantaneous reactions, perhaps the
content, tone, and nature of our posts will broaden as well.

~~~
plorg
Oh, I'm sure it did in some way. And I'm sure the Reactions will change the
way that we create posts in the future. I'm not sure, though, if it will
change in the way you suggest. I suppose I would be interested if certain
subjects would be shared more, and it's possible that the tone of posts would
change. For myself, though, I have a hard time imagining a post that I would
make knowing potential reactions included a 'like' that I wouldn't make if,
say, a 'sad' or 'angry' option were also available. I guess I'd be even less
likely (than completely unlikely?) to post anything vaguely political. But
other people post differently, I guess.

To be honest, until I see how others use them most of the new options seem so
blunt (or maybe so cute?) as to be almost embarrassing to use.

Maybe 'perplexed' or 'impressed' would be good options?

------
kruhft
"In the end the whole notion of goodness and badness will be covered by only
six words" \- Syme, 1984

~~~
qu4z-2
"\-- in reality, only one word."

Because let's be honest... this is because it's awkward to "Like" something
awful. I'm pretty sure there will be only one correct reaction for each post,
that people spam as they do "Like" now. It's hardly an opinion poll.

    
    
      "My cat died today" [10 sad, 3 angry, 1 haha]
    

EDIT: I put quotes around the quote, 'cause it's a quote and you're meant to
use quotes for quotes.

------
kefka
Because liking a "Was diagnosed with cancer today" post is... of questionable
taste.

~~~
exodust
And you think a 'sad face' will do the trick do you?

The only appropriate response to such a post - which by the way is
questionable to write in the first place - is to reply with actual words in a
private context.

If people are posting their cancer news on Facebook, followed by reaction
icons, shares, likes and notifications... I'm glad I'm not on Facebook.

~~~
kefka
Consider what I said as a placeholder for very bad news.

And I use FB mainly for events around my area and chat. I'm not much for
posting or resharing garbage. And it's not like my "Rah rah candidate"
shitposting is going to make someone else vote differently.

~~~
exodust
Yeah, I agree exactly with what you were trying to do. You picked a bad
example is all.

I have poked fun previously at this very thing you alluded to - that a news
story about a natural disaster or murder has a "like" button at all, is plain
stupid.

Adding new reaction icons to better represent the more appropriate response
_could_ backfire in that even they are still trivializing and almost gamifying
our responses. It might end up a tacky mess.

------
lnanek2
I tried hovering and long pressing on the Wired article's two like buttons,
the one on the side and the one on the bottom. No extra options. Tried the
same on the Facebook newsroom post
([https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2016/02/reactions-now-
available...](https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2016/02/reactions-now-available-
globally/)), no luck. Guess there's some sort of developer change required and
no one has made the change? Seems impossible to try.

------
arbre
I wish the design and image quality of the emoticons was better. They look a
bit ugly and the resolution is low. It looks pretty bad on my retina screen.

~~~
pcurve
They are rather generic, and has design-by-committee written all over it. They
probably spent tens of millions of labor-hours planning, creating, debating,
and testing

If I were running the show, I would've released 30 new ones covering wide
spectrum of emotions, and many purposely ambiguous. And NO text labels.

------
detaro
Facebook announcement: [https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2016/02/reactions-now-
available...](https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2016/02/reactions-now-available-
globally/)

~~~
mrdrozdov
Thanks for the link. Based on their promotional video, there are two things I
didn't realize.

1\. Even though there are multiple reactions, they're counted in aggregate. So
instead of see 6 smilies, 2 sadfaces, and 1 like, you'll see 9 interactions
were given.

2\. The most recent 3 reactions are shown. There's no way of telling who
reacted in which way, and the reaction break down.

3\. I was completely wrong with points 1 and 2. After testing out the feature,
it's trivial to see the reaction breakdown by either hovering over the
reaction counts, or by clicking it.

Realizing the hardest part of this change for me is that I have no idea how to
refer to the "reaction counts". Should I say, "Hey, your video had so many
reactions!"? I guess I'll have to feel it out. Sort of starting to feel that
this was a strategic move by FB to capture any new "like" type interaction
that a competitor tries to release. Github has stars, Twitter now has hearts,
FB has always been likes, but soon can/will be everything.

EDIT: Realized that reactions don't work in comments.

------
CM30
In other words, it's basically like this XenForo plugin, except applied to
Facebook posts:

[https://xenforo.com/community/resources/post-ratings-
taking-...](https://xenforo.com/community/resources/post-ratings-taking-likes-
to-the-next-level.410/)

It's not a bad idea, the concepts worked pretty well on the forums I've used
it on. It's gonna be quite handy for anything news related, like illnesses,
crimes, etc.

------
stephenc_c_
A copy of Slack's reactions?

~~~
ethanbond
Nah these have been in the works since well before Slack's thing.

~~~
charlieegan3
Got a source for that? I've taken a quick look and can't find anything
mentioning these before late 2015. Slack's blog post was in July
([http://slackhq.com/post/123561085920/reactions](http://slackhq.com/post/123561085920/reactions))

~~~
gk3
[https://medium.com/facebook-design/reactions-not-
everything-...](https://medium.com/facebook-design/reactions-not-everything-
in-life-is-likable-5c403de72a3f#.iu6yw8x12)

------
ljk
not sure if i like where this is going. fb is trying to simplify human
interactions. e.g. a friend's birthday coming up? send a generic "happy
birthday!" message!, want to react to someone? press a button!

maybe i'm just getting too old to be hip like the fellow kids these days

------
ComteDeLaFere
There's a back story somewhere in here, in that they tested two Happy faces
early on, and eventually opted to replace one of them with Anger.

------
JoeAltmaier
The demographic must be 15-year-olds. Way too cute for me. I'll never click on
any of that silly stuff.

------
skimmas
is this new? I have them for more then a month.

~~~
detaro
were in limited beta tests before, now generally activated.

~~~
int0x80
In my country (Spain) they have been working like a year or so. I think more
countries were used to test. In my limited experience (I don't use much fb) I
don't see a lot of people really using it. It's about 80%-likes/20%-the new
"emotions" that people use in posts.

------
sysrpl
A factoid:

When Mark Zuckerberg first started Facebook in his dorm room it was called
Facemash. Facemash ripped pictures from Harvard's online registar and let
other students rate their peers in a "hot or not" style game.

This rating of student's faces was quite successful and cut right to the core
of what was to follow: Shitheads using the Internet to gather likes and
dislikes of themselves and their "online friends" in a retarded game where
creating an artificial pecking order was fun/amusing. Then marketeers saw this
and thought, "Oh fuck yeah, free marketing and demographic data plus contact
information. Push that shit hard."

