Facebook as a social network continues to be the most widely used platform. The world's largest social network implemented changes with the "Like" button in 2016 and added Facebook Reactions. The latest study published on June 28 by Quintly revealed these icon-based reactions now make up 12.8 percent of all interactions on the social network.

Facebook's Reactions is composed of six emojis (Like, Love, Haha, Wow, Sad, and Angry). Quintly, a social media analytics and benchmarking company released a study about Facebook Reactions back in April 2016.

The data showed that only 2.4 percent were using these New Facebook Reactions.

Subsequently, another study was released in June of 2016. The usage had experienced a growth of 5.8 percent.

Methodology and background to the study

The data collected from this study was extensive. As reported in the Quintly blog post, 44 million posts from 218,289 brands were analyzed. The time period for the analysis was from January 1 to April 30: A total of four months of data assembled.

The "Like" button has definitely faded with the rollout of reactions. Initially, the "Like" button accounted for 76.4 percent of all interactions in the June 2016 study. Fast-forward to the present time, the percentage of Likes have dropped to just 61 percent.

A competing reaction was the heart or better known as the "Love" Reaction.

Its usage, in the beginning, was around 50 percent of the reactions used. However, the most recent data indicates that "Love" and "Haha" are tied for usage with exactly 35.9 percent.

Ranking of average new Facebook Reactions by country

As reported by Quintly in its study, Mexico is the most "Emotional" country. This is in terms of using the new Facebook Reactions, of course.

Trailing in second place is the Philippines. Vietnam, India, U.S.A, and others follow.

While Mexico claims the top spot, South Koreans have utilized reactions in a different manner. In accordance with the study's results, South Korea dominated with the use of the "Angry" reaction on Facebook.

Some current events could be attributed to the spike in usage of anger on the social network. For example, the fire that hit Sejong Hospital in the city of Miryang. As media reports indicated, it was the deadliest fire in the last decade.

Facebook patent for recording users' reactions

In spite of the scandals behind Cambridge Analytica, and the privacy issues concerns remain with regards to Facebook. The company's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, was summoned before a congressional committee to discuss the pitfalls behind the data breach.

In a report by Investopedia, Facebook filed for a patent in 2016. They wrote, "The patent details how secret inaudible messages in television ads can trigger an app installed on a smartphone to use the device's mic to record key details, according to news portal ArsTechnica."

The implications are that Facebook could assist advertisers with relevant information on how people react to an advertisement they see on television. Second, it could give more information to the advertiser about how to target the TV ad better, which means the technology would be more intrusive.

Modification made on June, 23, 2020.

A reaction tweet has been deleted after a demand from its user.
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