Facebook Messenger gets Reactions and Mentions
The app becomes more like Facebook: You can now add reaction emoji to individual messages and @ mentions in group chats.
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Facebook's Messenger app gets some new goodies.
Facebook
Messenger users can now show how they feel about individual messages with new Reaction emoji.
Like the emoji available when reading posts on the social network, the Messeger Reactions announced Thursday just require you to press and hold any message to access a pop-up set of love, smile, wow, sad, angry, yes and no emojis. If multiple people react in a group chat, with a single tap you'll be able to see a list of how each person felt about your message.
Don't have Messenger open? No problem, the app will notify about each and every reaction on your lock screen. The Reactions work in one-on-one and group chats and can be used to respond to any type of message, including other emoji.
Joining Reactions in Messenger is the ability to use @ mentions in chats and have them notify the person mentioned. Facebook says that while everyone in a conversation can see the mention, only the specified person in the group conversation gets a notification that they've been mentioned.
The new features start rolling out today and will be available worldwide in the coming days.
Facebook is in constant competition with other messaging services, including WhatsApp, which it owns. It recently launched Day, a very Snapchat-like feature in Messenger for sharing parts of your day in a video that disappears in 24 hours.