Facebook recrafts LIKE button with Emoji Reactions

After more than a year in development, Facebook’s expanded Like button “reactions” are now coming to a News Feed near you. For the first time, you’ll be able to react to friends’ posts with something other than a gesture of pure positivity.

Long press on the Like button and you’ll now see “love,” “haha,” “wow,” “sad,” and “angry,” and posts will now show the mix of reactions they’ve received. And while there’s no “dislike” button, as some users have long requested, Facebook says that the new mix of reactions has proven popular with users during testing in Spain and Ireland. It’s launching today on iOS, Android, and the web.

“We understand that this is a big change, and want to be thoughtful about rolling this out,” wrote Sammi Krug, Facebook’s product manager, on the company blog. “For more than a year we have been conducting global research including focus groups and surveys to determine what types of reactions people would want to use most. We also looked at how people are already commenting on posts and the top stickers and emoticons as signals for the types of reactions people are already using to determine which reactions to offer.”

Here’s our how-to guide for making six emoji serve countless roles in your iconographic convos.

Like

Intended purpose:

General approval; liking something.

Other uses:

Reminding someone of your existence.

Saying, “Hey, I haven’t read this lengthy and important report on unemployment that you’ve shared, but I’m aware and involved and care about this stuff, and look, I’ll get around to it. Seriously. I Pocketed it.”

Deciding not to feed a gladiator to the lions, but instead to give him a chance at avenging his slain wife and daughter so that he might find the peace he needs before he sheds this mortal coil.

Love

Intended purpose:

When like just isn’t enough; flirting.

Other uses:

Unnerving your concerned friends by Loving every single post on your girlfriend’s Facebook profile, even those published a decade before you two met.

Saying butt, because the heart icon is the closest we have until Facebook adds a peach.

Reminding a colleague that we are all just meat carriages for a tiny, fragile organ.

Haha

Intended purpose:

When something is funny.

Other uses:

Communicating that you just sipped hot soup, and your tongue is burnt.

Finding schadenfreude in the tragedy of others.

Wow

Intended purpose:

When you are shocked or impressed.

Other uses:

Threatening to swallow someone.

Expressing that something has gone very wrong and now your mouth is the same shape as your eyes.

Saying, “I’m so hungry! I’m a wittle baby! Feed me! Feed the wittle baby! Oopsie doopsie, just went poopsie!”

Sad

Intended purpose:

When you want the opposite of Like, when you are grieving, when you team lost the big game.

Other uses

Hinting that someone’s eye infection should get examined, because it’s producing a large, odorous discharge

Communicating that dehydration is a real problem, and drinking multiple cups of water a day might solve the poster’s difficult-to-cure malaise.

Sweating on someone’s post.

Angry

Intended purpose:

When you hate something, when you share a disgust for a given topic.

Other uses:

Telling someone your not pleased they sweat all over your post.

Communicating an unspeakable hatred.

Personifying the beady red pimple that has been with you since seventh grade.