25 Feb Facebook: Sad? Angry? Surprised? We Want to Know
Notice the make over on your Facebook posts? After years of discussion about having a “dislike” button on Facebook, we are finally seeing some variation to the “like” feature. If you were hoping for a “dislike” button, however, you’ll be disappointed. As of yesterday, Facebook introduced 5 new expressions on top of the traditional “like”.
Like, Love, Haha, Angry, Wow!, and Sad.
Facebook has never been one to hold back on changing it’s user interface. Since liking, commenting, and sharing are three most popular activities on Facebook, this move is arguably the most drastic change in recent memories.
On a marketing point of view, this allows for Facebook to collect even more data about it’s users. “Like” alone was a powerful indication of one’s interest — but now, Facebook can have more details about how you and people in your social circles feel about a status update, a picture, video, event, and more. This will create a whole new dimension, in this case — 5 new dimensions, to serve targeted ads.
Is there something more than just better ads? Of course.
Last year, Facebook briefly introduced an artificial intelligent assistant called “M”. “M” is just like Siri of Apple or Cortana of Nokia. “M”, however, is much smarter than Siri. Siri may be able to reply your text and tell you the weather, but “M” has enough data to most accurately plan your next perfect date night for you. “M” knows things about you and your friends that you may not even know.
Remember, Facebook’s only value is to bring interesting, entertaining, or useful information to you. It needs to understand what interests you, what holds your attention, what you want (before you even know it), and more importantly, who you care about. The introduction of 5 new expressions is expected and you can expect more features to learn about you, eventually.