Facebook Messenger rolls out mention alerts and message Reaction emoji

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Written By Larious

Larious is the Executive Editor of LowkeyTech. He is a tech enthusiast and a content writer. 

 

 

 

 

Last Updated on March 29, 2021 by Larious

Group chat will get a bit less chaotic with the global rollout of two Facebook Messenger features it was previously testing in Vietnam.

Users can now @mention friends in a group chat to send them a special notification to reply to your message so they don’t miss it in a noisy thread. You just type @, then the person’s name or in-thread nickname, and the name will be highlighted and that person will get an alert.

Meanwhile, Facebook is bringing its News Feed Reactions to Messenger so you can reply by attaching a love, smile, wow, sad, angry, thumbs-up or thumbs-down emoji to a specific message. This way you’ll be able to simply express agreement, disagreement or an emotion about a particular message, even if a bunch of other messages have come in since.

Tap and hold on a message to pull up the Reactions menu and select one. Everyone will see a counter of different reactions on the message, and you can tap that counter to see exactly who reacted how. Reactions work in one-on-one chats, too.

  1. 1 introducing

    1-introducing

  2. 2 reactions

    2-reactions

  3. 3 morereactions

    3-morereactions

  4. 4 mentions

    4-mentions

  5. 01 screen default framed

    01-screen-default-framed

  6. 02 screen panel reactions framed

    02-screen-panel-reactions-framed

  7. 03 screen love anim framed

    03-screen-love-anim-framed

  8. 04 screen love count framed

    04-screen-love-count-framed

  9. 05 receiver notification framed

    05-receiver-notification-framed

  10. 06 live reaction framed

    06-live-reaction-framed

  11. 07 quick add framed

    07-quick-add-framed

  12. 08 detail view framed

    08-detail-view-framed

  13. 09 www

    09-WWW

  14. 01 notification framed

    01-notification-framed

  15. 03 mention sheet framed

    03-mention-sheet-framed

  16. 04 mention composer framed

    04-mention-composer-framed

  17. 05 mention sent thread framed

    05-mention-sent-thread-framed

  18. 06 mention actions thread

    06-mention-actions-thread

The “Thumbs-down” Reaction could be interpreted as Facebook’s first real “Dislike button.” However, Facebook calls it a “No” Reaction and told me that since people often use Messenger for coordinating logistics, it wanted to add easy ways to vote for or against a proposed plan.

TechCrunch first spotted and reported on a test of Messenger Reactions early this month, and also saw that users in Vietnam were trying out mentions. Reactions works very similar to iOS 10’s iMessage’s Tapback reactions launched in September, and Slack’s more expansive and long-standing emoji reaction selector.

Messenger Reactions work the same as iMessage’s Tapback reactions that launched last year

Doubling down on group chat is smart for Messenger at a time when it’s been criticized for injecting social media content broadcasting into the communication app via Snapchat Stories clone Messenger Day. Messenger actually started as a group chat app called Beluga before Facebook acquired it. With mentions and Reactions, Facebook could use its better group chat experience than SMS to win users from the status quo.

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