Twitter working on Facebook-like emoji reactions to tweets

Twitter is exploring emoji reactions for different expressions like cheer, sad, hmm, and haha.

Twitter emoji reactions

Twitter is working on emoji reactions to tweets similar to what Facebook offers. At present you can only like a tweet by tapping the heart button. Twitter plans to add more reactions for “Likes”, “Cheer”, “Hmm”, “Sad”, and “Haha”.

These tweet reactions were spotted by Jane Manchun Wong who mentioned it earlier too this month. The icons for these tweet reactions are the same as the emojis. But Twitter is yet to finalise the icons for cheer and sad, and are using the generic heart icon at the moment. Based on the screenshot shared by Wong, Twitter will display the different tweet reactions along with the number of reactions received. It's similar to how Facebook displays emoji reactions to posts and comments. Twitter is also expected to show who reacted with which emoji.

The tweet reactions are missing a certain reaction, and that's for anger. Seeing how people already get embroiled in tweet wars which we can see through the replies and quote tweets, it was probably a good idea not to add the reaction. Twitter may have been working on reactions for quite some time. Earlier this year in March it was reported that Twitter conducted a survey asking people about emoji reactions. It also mentioned a downvote/dislike button but there's no word of that now.

The new tweet reactions would add to the existing heart icon on Twitter. With the emoji reactions Twitter may start looking more like Facebook. There's no word on when Twitter will release this new feature. It's currently busy working on multiple features.