The emojis are: Love, Haha, Yay, Wow, Sad, and Angry

Oct 8, 2015 18:51 GMT  ·  By

Three weeks ago, Mark Zuckerberg was announcing that the company was working on a way to show empathy, something similar to a Dislike button. Now Engadget Spain is reporting the company has started deploying emoji reactions as a way to show empathy, next to the classic Like button.

As many of us have predicted, a Dislike button concept would have been too brutal, and Facebook did exactly what it was supposed to do, giving users the tools to express a broader range of emotions.

Besides the Like button, which will continue to live on, the new emojis Facebook has added allow users to express/say: Love, Haha, Yay, Wow, Sad, and Angry.

For now, only available in Ireland and Spain

A Facebook spokesperson has confirmed the news later in the day and has also said this feature is currently only in testing, for users living in Ireland and Spain.

For now, this feature is called Reactions and is only available for mobile users. No timeline has been given for when this feature will be generally available for all Facebook addicts. I meant users.

Why only Spain and Ireland, you might ask? As Adam Mosseri, Facebook Director of Product, explains to TechCrunch, these two countries have isolated userbases, with very few international connections.

This allows the company to test new features without having to roll them out to a large number of countries, or to set up complicated UI filters to make sure only users of a certain nationality get to view them.

Once Zuckerberg gives the thumbs up, they'll appear everywhere

As Mosseri has also said, once this feature hits users timelines, it will not be optional, like how some Facebook Pages owners can turn off comments. They'll have the same status as a Facebook Like button, and they'll appear everywhere.

From the demo video provided by Chris Cox, Facebook Chief Product Officer, we can see the emoji reactions in action. Unfortunately, we cannot tell if these will be available as reactions to comments on posts.