Facebook Users Don’t Really ‘Like’ the New ‘Reaction’ Buttons

The researchers revealed that Facebook users are likely to interact with content that is entertaining and funny.

Users are still engaging through the older means: shares, likes and comments. (Photo: iStock)

Facebook’s new ‘Reaction’ buttons, introduced earlier this year have failed to engage users as much as anticipated according to a new study by researchers at Quintly, a US based company.

The study which looked posts on the social network is first step of the company’s Facebook Reactions analysis.

Since February 2016, Facebook gave its users five new ways to express their feelings other than the good old ‘like’. But a new study by Quintly, a US based company, has revealed that Facebook users are not using the new buttons frequently as expected.

The company analysed over 130,000 posts and found that of the users are still engaging through the older means- shares, likes and comments.

Surprisingly,“Love” was the most prominently used ‘reaction’ considering that the ‘like’ option already existed.

Facebook Reactions. (Courtesy: Facebook)

The Tech Times report also added that an in-depth scrutiny of the reaction data found that video content garnered the maximum number of ‘reactions’ with “Wow!” and “Angry” being used for videos more than static image content.

The study revealed that users were pleased with the ‘Reactions’ since it gave them the option of displaying negative reactions such as “Anger” and “Sadness”.However, the number of users that take advantage of the two possibilities is low.

The researchers arrived at the conclusion that Facebook users are more likely to interact with content that is entertaining, funny or positive.