Coverage: Facebook launches Reactions worldwide

Facebook released its Reactions feature worldwide Wednesday, giving users for the first time the ability to do much more than simply “like” a post.

Users’ options now include the following emotions: Like, Love, Haha, Wow, Sad and Angry.

Hayley Tsukayama of The Washington Post explained the social media site’s newest feature:

Facebook announced Wednesday that it is rolling out its Reactions feature across the globe, giving everyone a chance to express a broader range of emotions beyond the “Like.”

As the company first promised in October, users now have the option to respond to a post with one of the following emotions: Like, Love, Haha, Wow, Sad or Angry.

The governing idea behind Reactions is that people don’t always want “Like” to be their reaction to a post. If you want to show your sympathy for a friend who just lost his dog, for example, it never felt quite right to “like” a tribute post to his pup. (Of course, one could argue that is what comments are for.) It can also, of course, provide Facebook with more nuanced data about what you actually mean when you “like” a post — valuable information for its ever-advancing algorithms.

In a company blog post, Facebook said that Reactions will work the same for Facebook Pages — community or brand pages often set up for professional reasons — and will change nothing about the way the network measures the engagement of posts. “Page owners will be able see Reactions to all of their posts on Page insights,” the post said. “Reactions will have the same impact on ad delivery as likes.”

Yasmeen Abutaleb and Jessica Toonkel of Reuters detailed why advertisers cannot use Facebook’s new tool to target viewers:

But Facebook will not differentiate between the responses to determine a user’s interests when it places ads and other posts in a customer’s news feed. All reactions will be counted as additional likes, meaning Facebook will assume that the user wants to see more similar content, even if the person responded with an “anger” emoticon.

Facebook said it would decide later how new reactions should be weighted to personalize news feeds. But that is not soon enough for advertisers, who want to fine-tune their messages now.

“I think we should be able to use it for targeting,” said Jonathan Adams, chief digital officer at New York-based Maxus Americas.

“If I am Hillary, I would be thrilled to target people who can’t stand Trump right now,” he said, referring to U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and Republican candidate Donald Trump.

Corporations would be eager to study responses to determine whether chronic users of “sad” or “haha” buttons were more likely to buy different products, for instance, advertising executives said.

Advertisers said they hope Facebook would provide data showing the new range of reactions to posts and ads – to see whether an ad meant to be funny elicited ‘haha’, for instance – so they could tweak ads accordingly. Facebook distributes such information about ‘likes’ and has not said whether it would give out information on “reactions.”

“There hasn’t been much of an opportunity for people who are less vocal on social media to vocalize satisfaction,” said Chris Gilbert, senior social strategist at digital agency Kettle.

Advertisers will eventually be able to use the reactions to target audiences, he said. “It’s going to have a pretty big impact in understanding our work.”

Joanna Stern of The Wall Street Journal broke down how the new emoticons have large implications than just a simple “like”:

You may think the new negative emotions would be the biggest deal, but as it turns out, Love is.

I spent my first day with the tool “loving” nearly everything in my newsfeed: a photo of Prince, an engagement announcement, a video of a cat skiing. Ordinarily, I don’t even “like” cats.

But John Lennon was wrong: Love isn’t all we need. Which do you love most, your best friend’s new baby girl or McDonald’s new pancake-fried-chicken McGriddle? OK, don’t answer that. The point is, just as in life, the L-word should be used sparingly.

“Love is more than a lot of liking. It is qualitatively distinct,” says Thomas Bradbury, a psychology professor at University of California, Los Angeles, who studies intimate relationships. “When we hit that Love button, we should think, ‘This is truly special.’ ”

Appropriate use of Love: Photos of new babies, major life milestones, sentimental messages from actual loved ones.

Inappropriate use of Love: Most viral videos, any sort of food photos (not even bacon), anything posted by a brand.

Prof. Bradbury semi-jokingly suggested that Facebook give us a Love allowance. It’s not a horrible idea. Over-loving won’t spark World War III, but it could create a boy-who-cried-wolf situation. Will we need an “I really, really, really love this” button in a few years?

A lack of love could also lead to sadness. Studies have shown that Facebook and our obsession with instant feedback can have a negative impact on self-worth and self-esteem. You can imagine how some people will feel if their posts get no love.