Facebook recently announced the news that many of its fans had been waiting for: the release of more reactions!

If the humble like wasn’t enough for you, users can now show their feelings through the additional reactions of love, haha, yay, wow, sad and angry.

In the relatively short time since they went live, I’ve seen the new reactions wholeheartedly embraced by many of my friends and pages that I follow. I’ve used the love and yay ones myself- but only for posts that I really want to engage with. I’ve always been uncomfortable of having the like button as the only option to engage with a status update of a friend or brand- especially if it is sharing bad news.

For some users, upgraded reactions are what they’ve been wanting for a long time. For others, the dialogue and noise around the requested introduction of a dislike button was ignored. Facebook’s reasoning of the omission of a dislike button was to ensure that trolling on the social media platform wouldn’t take place, and that users could “express empathy and share a wide range of emotions.”

Brands have been quick to embrace the new use of reactions, with KitKat, Krispy Kreme and Samsung all using the new icons in online advertising and social media posts. Expect to see Facebook reactions used and promoted by even more brands in the coming weeks and months.

Whilst the introduction of Facebook reactions has been on the whole a positive move, time will tell as to how they embed into the everyday use of Facebook’s billion’s of users. Plus if they’re not fun enough just yet, try switching to Facebook’s Pirate language for a whole set of new reactions!

What do you think of the Facebook reactions? Share your thoughts with us!