Facebook is a very diverse and dynamic platform that keeps on changing continuously. In the year 2016, it made some changes that equip you to not merely like the post, rather express your emotions using its newly added emojis. Those new five emojis were love, haha, wow, sad, and angry. This gave the choice to the users to react to the posts ahead of the traditional “Like”.Yakov Bart, an assistant professor of Marketing at Northeastern University, was asked regarding its effect on the different users’ communities to which he provided some useful insight.
Facebook mentioned that these net emojis are considered, after comprehensive research, the most commonly felt emotions that the users are likely to use to express their reactions. This was also done in light of the fact that people nowadays are more prone to use it on mobile phones where typing comments could be more of a task. To overcome this issue, these certain features were added.
For the businesses, it might help in having more granular measurement data from how the people react to certain advertisements or any other content published by any page owner or publisher. This would help them to understand the sentiments of the consumers and would help them improvise their content. But the darker side to it would be a post by such people receiving a lower number of likes or dislikes. Considering the scenario where consumers can express their negative reaction to the posts openly, would not only lower their morale but also hamper the brand image. Above all, the investment made to Facebook to increase the content goal will also be wasted. The consumers will also be exposed to the same risk of receiving negative comments or getting ignored.
However, like the two sides of every coin, this newly introduced element of Facebook has a wide range of potential in boosting the emotional reactions of its users.
Surabhi Garg