Liking isn’t enough? New Facebook “reactions” offer “wow,” “sad,” more

Facebook's longtime stubbornness about its "like" button has finally crumbled—at least for users of the social network in certain European countries. The new feature, which Facebook says launched on Thursday as a "pilot test," is hidden behind the standard "like" button. When some users hold that button down for a moment, they reveal Facebook's newest addition: "reactions."

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and co. have deemed seven expressions worthy of official button status for FB users only in Ireland and Spain: like, love, haha, yay, wow, sad, and angry. Long-tapping or long-clicking on "like" brings up animated faces for most of the new ones, with the exception of "love" as a heart and "like" as the blue, old-school thumbs-up.

"We studied which comments and reactions are most commonly and universally expressed across Facebook, then worked to design an experience around them that was elegant and fun," Chief Product Officer Chris Cox wrote in an announcement (which also includes video of the feature). Cox also indicated that, following a test period of indeterminate time, the company "hopes to roll [reactions] out to everyone soon." An official company description of the service was published at The Verge. It described usage insights, including how users had been filing bug reports for years to ask for non-like options. Weirdly, the post also revealed that the company turns to Ireland and Spain to test new features because those users have the fewest international friends.

We're surprised to see such a range of buttons—especially since five of them are different flavors of "liking." It'll be interesting to see how the simple, binary concept of "liking" a post evolves with this slight boost in nuance—not to mention how weird it'll be to try to use some of these concepts as verbs. ("I totally haha'ed my sister's ugly baby photos," etc.)

The "sad" and "angry" reactions better resemble what Zuckerberg talked about during a September Q&A session when he finally confirmed that something along the lines of a "sympathy" button would soon join "like" on the site. This followed years of stubborn refusal to offer anything in the way of a "dislike" button, which Zuckerberg had publicly criticized as too similar to other sites' "downvote" options. In kind, these reactions appear to be cumulative on a respective Facebook post, as opposed to adding or taking away from others. (Also, each user can only use one reaction, meaning, for example, you can't "wow" and "angry" the same post.)

As with other new Facebook features, the new reactions appear to be turning on for users in waves, as none of our Irish comrades have gotten to dump a bunch of "wow"s and "haha"s onto their social media friends just yet.