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Facebook Replaces 'Like' Button With Reactions

Facebook Reactions Rolled Out In India
FILE - In this Dec. 13, 2011 file photo, a sign with Facebook's
ASSOCIATED PRESS
FILE - In this Dec. 13, 2011 file photo, a sign with Facebook's

If you've ever tried to express something other than admiration or approval over someone's post on Facebook and come up short, these new reaction buttons the social media platform is rolling out are just for you. fter the announced global rollout, Facebook reactions are availble in India from today.

Facebook has replaced its iconic 'Like' button with emojis called reactions -- Love, Haha, Angry, Sad and Wow.

Company's CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced in a post on the social network that "Reactions are a new way to express yourself. Not everyone is happy with a moment. Sometimes you want to share something sad or frustrating."

Today is our worldwide launch of Reactions -- the new Like button with more ways to express yourself. Not every moment...

Posted by Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday, February 24, 2016

"People wanted to express empathy and make it comfortable to share a wider range of emotions", he added. For using the reactions, one just has to hold the like button and scroll through the emojis to post the one they want.

There has been a strong demand of a dislike button on Facebook for quite sometime. Especially after tragedies like Nepal Earthquake and Paris Attacks, users of the social network didn't want to 'Like' posts related to the events.

Facebook's product manager Sami Krug detailed out the Reactions in a post. He said, "News feed is central to a user to get updates from the family, friends and all of the world. We've been listening and we thought there should be more ways to express how you feel about something in the newsfeed."

The company has been testing this feature for a year. They had already rolled out the reactions in countries such as Spain, Ireland and Portugal. Facebook's design lead Chirs Cox had been working on the reaction buttons since 2015 to understand various possibilities as well the impact of replacing the iconic like button.

Some of the news apps like Appygeek had various reactions to a news and even categorized them accordingly. Buzzfeed also has article categories such as LOL, WTF, OMG, Cute, Fail. But the change is pretty massive and could take some time to get used to. Also, the introduction of reactions could mean that technology like 3D touch from apple can implement something fun around it.

Although, Facebook has said the rollout of reactions is worldwide, a lot of users in various countries are not yet able to see the new emojis under the like button. We reached out to the Facebook and they said that, "Even though it is a global roll out it we update our systems phase wise over a couple of days. So the users will see the reactions soon".

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This article exists as part of the online archive for HuffPost India, which closed in 2020. Some features are no longer enabled. If you have questions or concerns about this article, please contact indiasupport@huffpost.com.