Facebook Developers Experiment With "Sympathy" Button

Facebook's "Like" button could be getting another overhaul. The company nixed the ubiquitous thumbs-up symbol, starting with a rollout at that began a month ago. Now it could be getting a more emotionally complex character in the guise of a "sympathy" button.

A Facebook engineer this week told the Huffington Post that some of the engineers at the social media giant were working on a "sympathize" button. The button could rely on a "mood" drop-down list when users post statuses. If the indicated mood is "sad", for example, the "like" button would turn into a "sympathize" button.

Friends could then automatically show sympathy by clicking it. The sympathy count would show up just as the like count shows up currently. This would remove the pesky need to type a sad-face emoticon or, heaven forbid, actual words of support found deep within the hearts of the average user's few hundred closest friends.

No timeline for the rollout of a "sympathize" button was announced. However, it was tested. One of Facebook's engineers has already tried it. The results were witnessed at a Facebook hackathon that occurred earlier this year.

SOURCE: Huffington Post

Via: Business Insider