London: The Facebook “Like” button is often used to acknowledge what someone has posted, but “liking” something isn’t the most appropriate reaction to every thing that gets shared on the 1-billion member social network.
That’s why recently an engineer at Facebook created a “Sympathise” button that could be used instead of the “Like” button.
The “Sympathise” button would be used for situations when someone posts about an unfortunate scenario, such as getting fired, a break-up or a death. The alternative button would appear when a user indicates a negative emotion — such as “sad” or “depressed” – on their status.
The “Sympathise” button was revealed late last week at a company event where Facebook engineer Dan Muriello was asked if the social network had ever considered adding a button that expressed emotion other than “Like.”
That’s when the engineer spoke about the “Sympathise” button, saying it was created by one of his colleagues at a recent company hackathon, which is where Facebook staffers get together to create out-of-the-box features and ideas for the company.
“It would be, ‘five people sympathise with this,’ instead of ‘five people ‘like’ this,’” said Dan Muriello, the Facebook engineer, according to The Huffington Post. “Which of course a lot of people were — and still are — very excited about.”
Although the “Sympathise” button was well received within the company, Facebook has said that it has no plans to add that feature to its website or apps any time soon.
“Facebook holds hackathons all the time and countless features get created at these events, and a few of them get added to the company’s website and apps,” the company said when asked about the “Sympathise” button. “But most of the features invented at Facebook hackathons don’t ever make it into the final product.”
