Facebook is experimenting with a new sympathetic button to help viewers express their commiserations to sad news by replacing 'like' with a new 'Sympathize' button on different occasions.
Facebook is constantly testing new features and this time the social network is experimenting a feature that lets users better acknowledge friends' posts. The popularity of the "like" button has been enormous and several users have opened up to the idea of introducing a "dislike" button. But it seems like Facebook may have found an alternate to the "like" button, but not with a "dislike" button.
Since not everything posted on the social network is cheerful and sometimes liking a status with the news of death, sickness, break up or a bad day can put you in an awkward situation. Facebook is experimenting with a new "sympathize" button that will appear on a status when users choose negative emotions such as "sad" or "depressed." The idea sounds exciting but the company is not yet ready to fully launch the new feature. The new button will not phase out the popular "like" button.
"It would be, 'five people sympathize with this,' instead of 'five people 'like' this,'" Dan Muriello, a Facebook engineer said while explaining the new feature on Thursday at the company'sCompassion Research Day. "Which of course a lot of people were -- and still are -- very excited about. But we made a decision that it was not exactly the right time to launch that product. Yet."
Muriello did not rule out the possibility of introducing the "sympathize" button in the future.
The idea of adding a new "sympathize" button emerged from hackathons, an important platform that gave birth to Facebook's current features like Chat, "suggest a friend," Timeline profile pages and the "like" button itself.
"Some of our best ideas come from hackathons, and the many ideas that don't get pursued often help us think differently about how we can improve our service," a Facebook spokesman said in an email to The Huffington Post.
Will the introduction of "sympathize" button, if it gets past the testing phase, eliminate users' craving for a "dislike" button?
