Pitchforks at the ready, folks – Facebook’s made a change to its service today that you’re sure to notice. You can now “react” to posts with a range of emoji-like icons instead of just “liking” a post with a thumb up.
The change, which has been in testing in “a few markets” over the last year, is now rolling out globally and should bring some much-needed nuance to your Facebook use. No longer do you need to “like” a friend’s post sharing bad news, but you can instead now commiserate with a sad face.
The list of Reactions on offer include the classic “Like” (still represented by a thumbs-up icon), “Love” (for when you really like something), Haha, Wow, Sad and Angry. You can only react to a post once though, and reactng again changes your reaction.
To react with something other than a “Like”, you have to long-press the Like button on the Facebook app, or on desktop you have to hover over the Like button for a brief time to make the options appear. The notification that someone’s “reacted” to your post is a little less exciting than knowing someone’s “liked” your post, too. Eventually we hope they become first class citizens of Facebook’s user interface, and a better visual hint on the still-all-important “Like” button would help this.
The types of reactions attached to a post show up in the space where the number of likes and comments used to be (the number of comments is now over on the right), along with names of some of those who’ve reacted
If you can’t see the reactions yet, you might need to update your Facebook app.
Happy reacting!
