Twitter is testing the emoji reactions feature for tweets on the timeline. With this feature, Twitter users can give more diverse reactions through emojis if they feel that just giving a 'Like' is not enough.
The trial is currently limited to users on Twitter. There are five emojis that users can choose from to respond to tweets, namely the crying emoji, thinking emoji, laughing while crying, clapping emoji and heart emoji, as quoted from The Verge, Sunday (12/9/2021).
Twitter said the trial was scheduled for a limited duration, but they did not rule out rolling the trial to more countries depending on user response.
Through its emoji reactions feature, Twitter said it wanted to give users an easier way to express how they feel about a tweet. Users can access these emojis by clicking and holding the Like button, while to like a tweet the user can click the Like button once.
Twitter testing emoji reactions featureTwitter testing emoji reactions feature Photo: doc. Twitter
The emoji reaction feature has been available on Facebook for years. This feature is actually already available on Twitter, but only in direct messages (DM).
But the emoji selection that Twitter is currently testing is different from the emoji selection already in DMs. Twitter didn't include negative emoji in this test, so there's no 'thumbs down' emoji like the ones in Twitter's DM emoji selection.
Social media with the bird logo chose not to include negative emojis because some of the people they surveyed said they were worried about receiving a negative reaction to their tweets. This reason is quite reasonable considering that conversations on Twitter can sometimes be toxic.
Meanwhile, the five emoji they chose represent the emotions users feel the most when reading their tweets, and are universally recognizable. Twitter says the laughing while crying emoji is the most used emoji in tweets.
Twitter users in Turkey will be able to sample this new feature in the next few days. This feature will be rolled out across iOS, Android and web platforms.
