They have only been out for a couple of days at best and yet the implications of Facebook’s new Reactions system are already being thoroughly studied and discussed by both official staff as well as multiple blogs or individuals who feel like they have something to share. The Reaction system is something that downright threatens to change the very essence that has been captured and known as Facebook for the past several years.

But then again, everything must change at one point and Facebook made the step. According to the company, the current reaction system which sums up to Like, Love, Haha, Yay, Wow, Sad and Angry were the result of an entire year of research and development in order to come up with. And that is one year after the 2 years of testing the territory and thinking of methods to apply the intention.

And the team that worked on the project was comprised of more than just Facebook employees. An entire team coming from UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center, led by Dacher Keltner – the founder, director and psychology professor – was on the job of developing the new Reaction system.

The series of conclusions that led to the creation of just the 6 new reactions that you can find on Facebook as of right now came from a selection of many more. And making the final selection of emotions that would be depicted in the reaction system took a lot longer to decide. Keltner mentioned in his research that he learned that scientists study more than 20 emotions present in human beings.

But Facebook had to find a series of reactions that would be recognizable to people all around the globe and not something limited to one particular space instead. From a selection of 50 emotions that were sent to the Facebook Reactions team by Pixar illustrator Matt Jones, the team had to choose just several that could best describe the selection of emotions that Facebook users would want to express without any further comment.

However, now that the Reactions system is complete and the issue of covering a wide enough selection of emotions that people may want to display to posts on Facebook, some individuals are not slow to express their concern over the effect of these additions. Multiple people are reporting the fact that the new system may overrun the classic version of actually typing out replies to people’s posts.

Even one of the people working on the team that developed the Reactions system expressed her concern that the new emojis may end up being misused and even abused in various circumstances. This is the internet after all.

How do you feel about the new Reactions system that Facebook has come up with?

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