Facebook launched its Reactions feature—an extension of the “like” button—in February, giving users more options to express their feelings instead of simply liking a post. Yet this feature is hardly being used.
quintly analyzed 130,000 Facebook posts worldwide from pages with a high number of followers, including brands, celebrities, politicians and sports.
The lion’s share (97.0% ) of Facebook post reactions consist of “likes.” In fact, Facebook’s Reactions—which include emojis such as angry, sad, love or wow—only make up a 3% share of reactions.
Furthermore, among all reactions other than “likes,” slightly more than half are love emojis, which express a similar emotion. Less than a third of non-“like” reactions were negative, translating to less than 1% of total reactions on Facebook.
Perhaps this lack of enthusiasm for Facebook’s new feature is because it doesn’t vary much from the simple “like” button that the social media network has had all this time. Facebook users have been asking for a “dislike” button for years, but instead of rolling one out, and keeping the post interaction as simple as possible, Facebook unveiled different types of emotion reactions. And none of the new options indicates users don’t like the post itself.
Facebook may be trying to keep the conversation as positive as possible, especially for marketers that are advertising on its platform. For example, a “dislike” button may not be a good thing for those that are running sponsored content, hoping to build an ongoing dialogue with users. Reactions, on the other hand, give users more options, that are a bit more optimistic than a “dislike” button would be.
Or, perhaps, users simply don’t want to express their emotions.