Facebook’s ‘Like’ Button Gets ‘Angry’ and ‘Sad’ as Friends

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

NEW YORK — Facebook’s “like” button isn’t going away, but it’s about to get some company.

Facebook has been testing alternatives to “like” in about a half-dozen countries, including Ireland, Spain and Japan. On Wednesday, Facebook started making “haha,” ‘‘angry” and three other responses available in the U.S. and the rest of the world.

In changing a core part of Facebook — the 7-year-old “like” button has become synonymous with the social network — the company said it tried to keep things familiar. The thumbs-up “like” button will look just as it long has, without the other choices cluttering the screen or confusing people. You have to hold that button or mouse over the “like” link for a second or two for the alternatives to pop up.

Here are seven things to know about Facebook’s latest feature, known as Reactions.

WHAT’S NOT TO LIKE?

When a friend posts that his father has died, or a cousin gets frustrated with her morning commute, hitting “like” might seem insensitive. Users have long requested a “dislike” button, but that was deemed too negative and problematic. Are you disliking the death or the call for sympathy?

Facebook chose to offer more nuanced reactions — “love,” ‘‘haha,” ‘‘wow,” ‘‘sad” and “angry” — alongside “like” — to give users “greater control over their expressivity,” says Julie Zhuo, Facebook’s product design director.

WHY THESE CHOICES

Facebook went through comments on friends’ posts, as well as emoji-like stickers people were using. It chose the most common ones and tested those. Facebook considered dozens of reactions — but offering them all would have been confusing. Think of having to flip through pages and pages of emojis: Do you want one wink, a tear, a full frown or a half frown?

Facebook ultimately chose these six reactions for their universal appeal — something that could be understood around the world. Even a generic happy face “was a little bit ambiguous and harder for people to understand,” Zhuo says.

Each reaction comes with an animated emoji, such as the thumbs up for “like” and a heart for “love.” These emojis will look the same around the world, but phrases such as “love” will be translated.

 “LIKE” STILL TAKES CENTER STAGE

Zhuo says people click on “like” more than a billion times a day, so “we didn’t want to make that any harder.” It’s still the go-to reaction for most posts. But Zhuo says in the countries tested, people used the alternatives more frequently over time.

HOW TO GET STARTED

The rollout is expected to take a few days to complete. You’ll get the feature automatically on Web browsers, but you’ll need to update your app on iPhones and Android devices (no word yet on Windows and BlackBerry).

Facebook already shows how many people like a post and lets you tap or click on the count for a list of people. With Reactions, you see how many people have reacted in some way, along with the top three reactions, such as “love” followed by “haha” and “wow.” You can get breakdowns for each reaction — the total and specific people. If you don’t update your app, you’ll just see the number of likes.

Once you have this, you can start marking older posts as “wow” or “sad,” too.

A HAPPY BIAS?

Facebook has a complex formula for deciding which of your friends’ posts are more prominent. Ones that get a lot of likes, for instance, will tend to show up higher. Now, posts marked “angry” or “wow” will bump up, too.

But Facebook wants to show what it thinks you’re most interested in — and that might ultimately mean mostly happy posts, rather than ones that evoke sadness or anger. Zhuo says Facebook will tweak its formulas based on how people respond.

EXPRESS THAT ANGER

These alternative reactions are for all posts, including those from groups and brands. A company won’t be able to block the ability to mark its posts with anger.

IT TOOK A YEAR TO DEVELOP

Why so long? Besides deciding on how many and which specific reactions to offer, Facebook needed to figure out the right way for people to discover and use it. For instance, a menu might have been harder to find, while offering all six buttons up front might have made it harder to just quickly “like” a post and move on. Zhuo says CEO Mark Zuckerberg pushed for the long-press method as a balance.

The feature is expected to evolve over time, and Facebook may add or change choices based on feedback.

Online:
Facebook’s blog post: http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2016/02/reactions-now-available-globally

不再只有讚！5新表情符號 台灣臉書上線了

用戶等待已久的臉書新表情符號終於上線！臉書創辦人兼執行長祖克柏廿四日貼文介紹五種新表情符號，讓用戶可表達喜怒哀樂與愛等感受，台灣地區用戶也在今天凌晨發現這些新表情符號已經可以使用了！

這項新功能名為「反應」（Reactions），除了原本的讚（Like），還包括新的五種符號：愛（Love）、哈哈（Haha）、哇（Wow）、傷心（Sad）和生氣（Angry）。使用電腦版臉書時，將滑鼠游標移動到表情列，選項就會浮出；使用手機或平板者只要長按住符號鍵，就能選擇表情。新的表情符號，連同之前的讚，在使用者送出按鈕前都會動。

先前測試版原本還有「耶」（Yay），但臉書透露，測試結果顯示網友認為「耶」定義模糊也較少用，因此決定刪去。

去年九月，祖克柏首度鬆口表示正測試新表情，翌月在愛爾蘭及西班牙的臉書測試。他在自己的臉書專頁貼文表示，多年來網友不斷要求增加新表情符號，因為有時候想分享的事可能是傷心或挫折的，按讚感覺很怪。祖克柏說，目前最受歡迎的符號是愛，他很滿意這個趨勢。

臉書推出新表情符號可謂一石二鳥，一方面滿足用戶要求，另一方面藉以蒐集更多數據，分析用戶喜好。以往只有讚可以按時，難以分辨用戶對於每則貼文的感受；現在多了五種，對於有賴數據營利的臉書，不啻提供更強大的資料庫。

不過臉書並未透露將如何應用新符號帶來的新數據；專家猜測，臉書可能用於貼文顯示的演算法，決定讓用戶看的正/負面貼文比例，也可能應用於教育。

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2016/02/24/technology/ap-us-tec-facebook-beyond-likes-things-to-know.html

2016-02-26．聯合報．A17．國際．編譯莊蕙嘉