Facebook has now firmly become part of modern culture for most people in the West and elsewhere around the globe, and it’s not hard to see why. Our friends and family are often to be found on Facebook quite easily, and for a huge amount of people the world over it’s their primary way to share things with people and connect to their loved ones no matter where they might be. Certain things have become ubiquitous with Facebook, such as the ‘Like’ button which famously gave us the blue thumbs-up icon, but the company has more recently tried to build on that with ‘Reactions’. These were introduced to give users more ways of reacting to a post beyond simply liking something, while also swerving a controversial “dislike” button.
These included emojis as reactions, giving Facebook users a way of expressing something more in a similarly-speedy fashion to the like button. Now, it appears as though Facebook is to use this weekend’s Mother’s Day to test a time-sensitive reaction. As discovered in the site’s source code, a “Thankful” reaction has been found, which is depicted by a purple follow. Being thankful is something that we’r all supposed to do on Mother’s Day, so the naming inside of the source code seems to make sense. What doesn’t seem to make sense however, is that the reaction wont be rolled out in the United States this weekend, but will give “people in a few markets to leave a flower reaction”.
Why this isn’t going to be available in the United States is unclear, but the big news here is that Facebook has plans to release time-sensitive reactions at all. This could be a good way for the network to help further promote the new feature as well as perhaps bring those less active users back to Facebook during these special occasions with the hope to keep them there. For now however, US residents will have to have send their Moms well wishes through some other means, like picking up the phone, taking them out to dinner, or perhaps even sending them some real flowers.