Facebook, the social networking behemoth, is testing half a dozen reactions that go beyond Likes—among them Love and Angry—while at the same time prototyping a new feature that would make it easy to send “Happy Birthday!” videos to friends on mobile, according to The Next Web. The publication writes that Facebook’s iPhone and iPad application is prompting some users to send a video as a birthday greeting directly from within the app.
Happy Birthday videos on mobile
“To use it, you just tap the record button and capture a message of up to 20 seconds,” author Ben Woods explains. “You can then review it before posting to the person’s wall”.
This is what some people are seeing in Facebook’s mobile app.
Cool, no?
Going beyond Likes
Engadget reveals that the widely rumored Dislike button that Facebook is supposedly working on is actually a bunch of newly designed reactions.
They’re calling them Reactions and you’ll use them to expresses multiple emotions that go beyond Likes. “Our sources advise that Facebook will start testing the feature on users in Ireland and Spain as soon as Friday,” writes the publication.
You’ll be able to use these Reaction stickers on statuses, user posts and those from Facebook pages, with a breakdown of which responses each missive received.
Facebook’s Ad Manager will continue to treat all Reactions as Likes for the time being. TechCrunch has identified some of the reaction stickers, each animated through an expressive emoji character: Like, Love, Haha, Yay, Wow, Sad and Angry.
As you can see for yourself, these animated emoji stickers will help convey emotions beyond Likes and respond to other people’s posts with love, laughter, happiness, shock, sadness, anger and so forth. The seven new emoji reactions will sit alongside the thumbs-up icon, popping up as needed.
Adam Mosseri, Facebook’s director of product, said they’re currently not planning on bringing Reactions to Messenger or other Facebook products.
“Typing on mobile is difficult,” Mosseri says, “and this is way easier than finding a sticker or emoji to respond to in the feed.”
“On mobile, the emoji will come up when you touch the like button on your screen,” says TechCrunch. “On desktop they will come up as you hover the mouse over the like or click on it.”
Cool, when can I try this?
It’s hard to say, but the very fact that Facebook is testing out these new features with a small subset of its humongous user base indicates that public launch is probably around the corner. Watch this space as we publish new information as it becomes available.
Source: The Next Web, Engadget, TechCrunch