Social Network: Facebook emoji reactions now available for comments

Facebook is finally expanding its ‘Reactions’ to comments, so users can add love, haha, wow, sad, and angry to individual replies instead of News Feed posts alone. “We’ve heard from people they’d like more ways to show their reaction in conversations on Facebook, so we’re rolling out the ability to react to comments,” a Facebook spokesperson said in a statement.

It appears to be rolling out slowly for now so it may not show up for everyone just yet, but in the meantime, here’s what it looks like. As with ‘Reactions’ on posts, you can add a ‘Reaction’ to a comment by hovering over the like button. However, this isn’t the first time that Facebook has expanded Reactions since it started rolling out the feature in News Feed last year. The company introduced the feature in Messenger earlier this year as well. Messenger’s ‘Reactions’, notably, included a ‘thumbs down’ emoji, which is still the closest thing we’re ever going to get to a ‘dislike’ button.

The fact that ‘Reactions’ are now expanding to comments is either long overdue or completely terrible, depending on how you feel about the cartoonish-emoji. Just remember, advertisers can use your Reactions in News Feed to their advantage. No matter how you feel, though, your comments are going to get a lot more colourful. Facebook is also testing a GIF button for comments section as well, according to a report in TechCrunch. Users will be able to search for GIFs from popular libraries such as Tenor and Giphy to post in comments section. However, this is a limited test that might not roll out for everyone eventually. Clearly, Facebook is focused on making the comments section more interactive.

Facebook has officially launched Express Wi-Fi in India in partnership with Airtel and other ISPs. The service aims at offering high speed internet over WiFi at a low cost for consumers to access content. Users can buy a daily, weekly or monthly data packs and go online. In a market where mobile data prices are still high compared to broadband tariffs, services like Facebook Express and Google WiFi are a big win for consumers.