Facebook’s Sympathize Button to Prevent “Strange Likes”

Have you ever come across a situation where there is a sad status and you had to like it? Obviously, the like button does not always convey the way you want to say things, especially in a disastrous situation. Facebook has come up with a brilliant idea to provide a sympathize button as an option in certain situations. This will work when a user chooses a negative emotion from Facebook’s feeling’s list in the status update. Here the like option would change into sympathize. Sympathize button was created as a part of an internal project and currently has no plans of appearing in the site.

While participating in the ‘Compassion Research Day’, the public and researchers tried to improve the understanding of compassion and ‘sympathize’ button was created. This was done in order to give a proper reaction to certain situations. If someone reports that their family member had passed away, one can choose to sympathize with the comment instead of liking it.

This button won’t be working for every comment. In case the post is tagged with emotions that signify sadness; the button will appear as a choice to portray. One needs to choose the emotion from the Facebook feelings and sympathize with the comment. Though many people are revealing their excitement on this ‘sympathize button’, Facebook is not yet ready to launch it.

Facebook Chat and friend suggester facilities came to work by brainstorming ideas in Facebook hacakathons. With the pressure from users for reacting in a proper way to sad news, Facebook has taken a step ahead to create the sympathize button in the Facebook Hacakathons event. Many users have complained about the awkward situation they had to face with the ‘Like Button’. People have had to respond to deaths, traumatic break ups and other mishaps, but the ‘Like’ button hasn’t helped them much.

‘Dislike’ button is also not something in their books as of now. With a huge number of young users on social networking sites, sensitive issues may be triggered through the dislike button. Especially the ones like body image and other challenges they face. Facebook is currently against the idea of creating the dislike button as negativity may spread around quickly. As for the ‘sympathize’ button the waiting continues. It would be really cool if Facebook decided to create the button soon on the website!