Facebook got suggestion of “Sympathize” button
Facebook would think of adding a “Sympathize” button as reported by Bianca Bosker at the Huffington Post. This button would help users to tell their friends and other users on Facebook that they have seen the post but it is not specifically in the “like” manner as for example to tell someone who have had a bad day, or on breakup.
Facebook engineer Dan Muriello noted at the company’s annual Compassion Research Day that another engineer supported strong feelings for the button at a previous compassion-themed hackathon.
A Facebook spokesman called the hackathons “the foundation for great innovation and thinking about how we can better serve people around the world.”
“Some of our best ideas come from hackathons, and the many ideas that don’t get pursued often help us think differently about how we can improve our service,” the spokesman wrote in an email to The Huffington Post.
Support of “Sympathize” button by Muriello has still not gone to the site but has been appreciated by fellow Facebookers.
“It would be, ‘five people sympathize with this,’ instead of ‘five people ‘like’ this,'” said Muriello. “Which of course a lot of people were — and still are — very excited about. But we made a decision that it was not exactly the right time to launch that product. Yet.”
It would be interesting to see the strategy by which the company would place the button, if it will be accepted, without disturbing the feelings of its users. However, we are also still waiting for something such as “dislike” button.
