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Anyone remember YouTube's reaction buttons added over 4 years ago? http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2011/06/youtube-reactions.h...

And it was killed because no one used it correctly and it made things more difficult versus a simple like/dislike?

What makes things different now?

I hadn't remembered them, so I checked your source... they were text counters with the labels "LOL", "OMG", "EPIC", "CUTE", "WTF", and "FAIL", apparently. If that was the actual implementation, then I can see several things that are different. The YouTube reaction button effort seems, in retrospect, to have made several horrible mistakes. The one that strikes me as a dead-in-the-water kind of mistake was mediating culturally between the commentator and the comment in what was probably a misguided attempt to be appealing.
+1 Interesting! (Slashdot has had an even more nuanced reaction system since the 1990s.)

What's different now is the visual representation - reactions as emoji.

And speaking from experience (the TapestryMaker social network platform has had emoji-based reactions for a couple years) it really does change the quality of the discussion. Especially on phones, one-click responses are a lot easier; so giving people a big one-click vocabulary makes conversation much richer. And having it representable visually rather than textually changes the image/text balance which for many people really improves their overall experience -- even though people who prefer text may not see it that way.

The difference? YouTube didn't loose anything. Facebook looses it's iconic brand: the white on blue 'like', that is just positive and teints the whole FB brand positively.

Oh, and people would use those things 'correctly', it's just too embarrassing sometimes. A simple 'like' is much more diplomatic.

I think you can still just click 'Like' the same way if you don't care about reacting otherwise?
Perhaps the average user is more tech and social-tech savvy now than then. That would be my guess. It feels like there are a lot of things now that seem intuitive that would've been a bridge too far for the average user to figure out 6 years ago.
"My aunt died" - like.

This was pretty much the case Zuckerberg presented for redesigning the button.

Snapchat
My favourite part of the whole article is the phrase "Your algorithmically determined best friends".
Interesting point from another Facebook Newsroom post. The News Feed is going to treat all Reactions as a show of interest. It'll try to show you more of the things that you react to. So if you click sad on everything, your News Feed will be sadder than a Nicholas Sparks story.

Link for those interested: http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2016/02/news-feed-fyi-what-the-r...

Let me know if I've got it wrong because I'm making this point to everyone I see.

"Initially" i think is the point you're missing. This is like a trial run to see how people use it. Once they figure out the weighting I expect changes to the newsfeed.
The large size of the reactions menu feels pretty odd to me. Perhaps they have been influenced by the large size of emoticons in apps like Katalk and Google Chat.

Still, my first impression is that it seems like an awkward in-between size: not conspicuous enough to fit in with the current scale and not large enough to set itself apart well.

I don't understand why they are so hideous. The colouring doesn't match Facebook's branding at all, the rounded pop-up box isn't used anywhere else, and the magnification stretches outside of it.

It looks atrocious. Like they didn't even care to make it look seamless—it's just a cobbled together add-on.

Or perhaps it speaks to a big UI-style refresh that they're going to roll out?

It definitely feels like they're moving towards a UI refresh just based on some of the tweaks they've rolled out lately. Besides, they're due for an overhaul.
And the "already liked" icons are way too small.

Honestly, it looks like shit. But it fits well with the stupid images in comments.

This is a huge change. Relationships have been broken over "likes" in the past. We invented unwritten rules about what is OK to like and what is not.

I'm really curious how the new additions will change those unwritten rules and our behavior.

If a relationship breaks over a "like", then it was a shitty relationship bound to brake anyway.
The way I used to look at it the 'Like' button was intended as a signal of affirmation to a person than to their comment. That is certainly the way my FB "Friends" use it. Often other people don't have a perfectly distilled reaction to something, and the button functions more to say "this affected me" than, say, "I like your perspective on the President's policy in the Middle East."

The semantics of a button labeled "Like" are certainly a little bit weird. I obviously don't like the fact that a friend is diagnosed with cancer. But my friends also don't post "I've got cancer." and leave it at that. People tend to explain their feelings if they share things like that.

In any case, I'm not sure that Reactions are really much of an improvement. If my friend says, "I've got cancer, but my doctor says I can beat it. Thank you for all your support." I think I'd find this new feature confusing. Is it a "Like" because she has a positive outlook? Is it a "Sad" because cancer is difficult and stressful? Is it a "Wow" because it's unexpected? Or is it even an "Angry" because my deity of choice has shown itself to be capricious or vengeful?

Maybe there's a positive side to this. Maybe it will, unwittingly, encourage people to attempt to share their feelings and try to process them instead of just clicking a button.

Here's something to consider. What if the prior lack of buttons other than 'Like' subconsciously conditioned us to create posts that are 'like'-able?

With a slightly wider spectrum of instantaneous reactions, perhaps the content, tone, and nature of our posts will broaden as well.

Oh, I'm sure it did in some way. And I'm sure the Reactions will change the way that we create posts in the future. I'm not sure, though, if it will change in the way you suggest. I suppose I would be interested if certain subjects would be shared more, and it's possible that the tone of posts would change. For myself, though, I have a hard time imagining a post that I would make knowing potential reactions included a 'like' that I wouldn't make if, say, a 'sad' or 'angry' option were also available. I guess I'd be even less likely (than completely unlikely?) to post anything vaguely political. But other people post differently, I guess.

To be honest, until I see how others use them most of the new options seem so blunt (or maybe so cute?) as to be almost embarrassing to use.

Maybe 'perplexed' or 'impressed' would be good options?

"In the end the whole notion of goodness and badness will be covered by only six words" - Syme, 1984
"-- in reality, only one word."

Because let's be honest... this is because it's awkward to "Like" something awful. I'm pretty sure there will be only one correct reaction for each post, that people spam as they do "Like" now. It's hardly an opinion poll.

  "My cat died today" [10 sad, 3 angry, 1 haha]
EDIT: I put quotes around the quote, 'cause it's a quote and you're meant to use quotes for quotes.
Because liking a "Was diagnosed with cancer today" post is... of questionable taste.
And you think a 'sad face' will do the trick do you?

The only appropriate response to such a post - which by the way is questionable to write in the first place - is to reply with actual words in a private context.

If people are posting their cancer news on Facebook, followed by reaction icons, shares, likes and notifications... I'm glad I'm not on Facebook.

Consider what I said as a placeholder for very bad news.

And I use FB mainly for events around my area and chat. I'm not much for posting or resharing garbage. And it's not like my "Rah rah candidate" shitposting is going to make someone else vote differently.

Yeah, I agree exactly with what you were trying to do. You picked a bad example is all.

I have poked fun previously at this very thing you alluded to - that a news story about a natural disaster or murder has a "like" button at all, is plain stupid.

Adding new reaction icons to better represent the more appropriate response could backfire in that even they are still trivializing and almost gamifying our responses. It might end up a tacky mess.

I tried hovering and long pressing on the Wired article's two like buttons, the one on the side and the one on the bottom. No extra options. Tried the same on the Facebook newsroom post (https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2016/02/reactions-now-available...), no luck. Guess there's some sort of developer change required and no one has made the change? Seems impossible to try.
I wish the design and image quality of the emoticons was better. They look a bit ugly and the resolution is low. It looks pretty bad on my retina screen.
They are rather generic, and has design-by-committee written all over it. They probably spent tens of millions of labor-hours planning, creating, debating, and testing

If I were running the show, I would've released 30 new ones covering wide spectrum of emotions, and many purposely ambiguous. And NO text labels.

Facebook announcement: https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2016/02/reactions-now-available...
Thanks for the link. Based on their promotional video, there are two things I didn't realize.

1. Even though there are multiple reactions, they're counted in aggregate. So instead of see 6 smilies, 2 sadfaces, and 1 like, you'll see 9 interactions were given.

2. The most recent 3 reactions are shown. There's no way of telling who reacted in which way, and the reaction break down.

3. I was completely wrong with points 1 and 2. After testing out the feature, it's trivial to see the reaction breakdown by either hovering over the reaction counts, or by clicking it.

Realizing the hardest part of this change for me is that I have no idea how to refer to the "reaction counts". Should I say, "Hey, your video had so many reactions!"? I guess I'll have to feel it out. Sort of starting to feel that this was a strategic move by FB to capture any new "like" type interaction that a competitor tries to release. Github has stars, Twitter now has hearts, FB has always been likes, but soon can/will be everything.

EDIT: Realized that reactions don't work in comments.

In other words, it's basically like this XenForo plugin, except applied to Facebook posts:

https://xenforo.com/community/resources/post-ratings-taking-...

It's not a bad idea, the concepts worked pretty well on the forums I've used it on. It's gonna be quite handy for anything news related, like illnesses, crimes, etc.

A copy of Slack's reactions?
I don't have a source, but no, I remember hearing about them before Slack's reactions were released. What they really were is a take on ("copy of") Path's reactions[1], which are very similar in concept.

But I think putting too much importance on "copy" is wrongheaded. Facebook's team seems smart to "copy" these things from other platforms that prove their worth, just like tons of other platforms "copy" original things that Facebook's team has vetted. Who cares.

[1]: http://techcrunch.com/2015/10/08/with-reactions-facebook-sup...

I don't think so.

I remember reading on multiple occasions (most recently, about two or three months ago) that "Mark Zuckerberg is preparing a dislike button", when, in fact, he was referring to adding more buttons to use in situations where "liking" things is not appropriate. This change brings just that.

Nah these have been in the works since well before Slack's thing.
Got a source for that? I've taken a quick look and can't find anything mentioning these before late 2015. Slack's blog post was in July (http://slackhq.com/post/123561085920/reactions)
not sure if i like where this is going. fb is trying to simplify human interactions. e.g. a friend's birthday coming up? send a generic "happy birthday!" message!, want to react to someone? press a button!

maybe i'm just getting too old to be hip like the fellow kids these days

There's a back story somewhere in here, in that they tested two Happy faces early on, and eventually opted to replace one of them with Anger.
The demographic must be 15-year-olds. Way too cute for me. I'll never click on any of that silly stuff.
is this new? I have them for more then a month.
Before large software companies roll out new features to everyone, they usually do A/B testing to make sure everything is going to work alright and to compare usage statistics.
were in limited beta tests before, now generally activated.
In my country (Spain) they have been working like a year or so. I think more countries were used to test. In my limited experience (I don't use much fb) I don't see a lot of people really using it. It's about 80%-likes/20%-the new "emotions" that people use in posts.
I just got them today.
A factoid:

When Mark Zuckerberg first started Facebook in his dorm room it was called Facemash. Facemash ripped pictures from Harvard's online registar and let other students rate their peers in a "hot or not" style game.

This rating of student's faces was quite successful and cut right to the core of what was to follow: Shitheads using the Internet to gather likes and dislikes of themselves and their "online friends" in a retarded game where creating an artificial pecking order was fun/amusing. Then marketeers saw this and thought, "Oh fuck yeah, free marketing and demographic data plus contact information. Push that shit hard."