Twitter Reactions Are Coming

Chuck Forbes - October 11, 2021

Facebook and LinkedIn have gotten users acclimated with post reactions. No longer does the simple “like” stand up to the post options users now have to express their feelings. We have all seen them and probably began to use them at some point. Here are some current post reaction options for users on Facebook and LinkedIn:

Facebook: Like, Love, Care, Haha, Wow, Sad and Angry

LinkedIn: Like, Celebrate, Love, Insightful, Curious

Social Media platforms keep a close pulse on each other – we have seen a new feature, such as stories, start on one platform and soon rollout to others. These trends usually revolve around a more personal experience and ability to better track user behavior. Post Reactions are no different, so it shouldn’t be to surprising that Twitter has been testing them in certain regions of the world, most recently Turkey. 

While the change may be simple to the user, Twitter, like the platforms before them must still collect their own feedback and roll out the feature based on their protocol. Unlike a social media feature like stories, post reactions have the opportunity to be unique and personable for that platform’s users. Look at Facebook and LinkedIn for example, Facebook includes reactions such as care, sad, wow and angry – simplistic words chosen to fit all ages. Being a more professional, career-driven platform, LinkedIn allows users the chance to react with celebrate, insightful and curious. Twitter has test reactions such as funny, agree, disagree and interesting. While not finalized, we can likely assume Twitter will have its own unique channel reactions.  

Twitter would not be testing this feature if it was not proven successful on Facebook and LinkedIn. The benefits to the user include that more personal experience, allowing them to share more specific feelings towards posts, or tweets, they engage with. Twitter will also have the opportunity to collect user data in new categories based on the reactions of followers. Knowing that a user liked 15 tweets from sports broadcasters is useful marketing information. Knowing that a user agreed with 7 tweets from accounts who work at the same news source, and found 8 tweets about history of football is powerful marketing information. Twitter could also use tweet reactions for algorithm rankings or monitoring tweets that receive a rapid amount of negative reactions. 

Stay tuned for future tweet reaction tests and updates, as they could become permanent for your experience soon.