14 DAY TRIAL // Facebook has moved ahead with a plan it unrolled last year and modified how its iconic Like button works by adding emoji-based reactions.
Teased in September by the company's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, at a Q&A session at Facebook's headquarters in Menlo Park, California, the emoji reactions entered a testing phase at the start of October, but only for users in Spain and Ireland.
As the rest of the world watched with craving eyes YouTube clips of the new buttons in action, the social networking giant seems to have finished its pilot stage, and as of today, it has announced the global availability of its new emoji reactions options.
Emoji reactions are the same as they were during early tests, except one
Compared to the version we all got a sneak peek at in October, the buttons remain relatively the same. The final version includes the following reactions: Like, Love, Haha, Wow, Sad, and Angry. The Yay reaction was removed.
To access these extra reactions, users need to hover their mouse over the Like button, or long-press the Like button on their mobiles. Hitting the Like button will count as a "Like" as usual.
No word on whether the new emoji reactions are coming to comment likes
The emoji reactions are available for Facebook posts, and not for comments. The company has not said if it plans to add the new reactions to comment Likes.
"Every day, people come to Facebook to discover what’s happening in their world and around the world, and to share all kinds of things, whether that’s updates that are happy, sad, funny or thought-provoking," Sammi Krug, Facebook Product Manager, writes. "We’ve been listening to people and know that there should be more ways to easily and quickly express how something you see in News Feed makes you feel."
Below is a video of the new emoji reactions in action, as well as an image of some of the different stylistic variations Facebook had for the emojis.
