3 ms·

Slack's Reactji -- which lets you use any standard or custom emoji as a reaction -- is significantly more useful than Facebook's very limited set of options, an

by jawns 11y ago

Slack's Reactji -- which lets you use any standard or custom emoji as a reaction -- is significantly more useful than Facebook's very limited set of options, and it came first. You would think that after seeing how well received the Slack Reactji are, Facebook would have expanded its available options. I can understand not venturing into custom emoji, but at least let there be a :pile-of-poo: reaction! After all, it's an election year!

uptownJimmy 11y ago
I disagree: Slack tends to be used by work-related groups, where people are already semi-prepared for what any one of their co-workers might post in the company Slack channel(s). Facebook is absolutely correct in keeping a very tight rein on this stuff, and in making the options uniformly "cute". If emotions start running too high, people will start abandoning the entire platform, I think.
onewaystreet 11y ago
Slack's usage is tiny compared to Facebook's. Facebook has to account for a dozen things that Slack doesn't. The big one is all of the different cultures that use Facebook.
criley2 11y ago
You can put emoji in a comment for similar effect. The facebook system allows a few critical things: - a simple tally of reactions. With an open-ended set of emoji, it's a bit silly to tally emoji responses. With 6 options, the tallies are interesting. - advertising. These six actions are a known quantity and can be baked into their advertising and display algorithms at every level. Using emoji, you'd have to build some kind of emoji-emotion-algorithm which classifies the use of all emoji in real time to a small set of factors for use in the algorithm But yeah nothing is stopping you from filling up facebook messages and comments with :poo: emoji and stickers and gifs.
- acdha 11y ago
  > - a simple tally of reactions. With an open-ended set of emoji, it's a bit silly to tally emoji responses. With 6 options, the tallies are interesting. Slack's implementation is worth using to question whether of your speculated problems would actually be significant. It updates the tallies in real-time and requires only a single click to increment the count. Although people could use any emoji, in practice there are only a small percentage which are relevant and people tend to add to previous ones rather than add a random new one. > - advertising. These six actions are a known quantity and can be baked into their advertising and display algorithms at every level. Using emoji, you'd have to build some kind of emoji-emotion-algorithm which classifies the use of all emoji in real time to a small set of factors for use in the algorithm If an advertiser was trying to do this, they'd have to do all of that work either way – the only difference is the size of the lookup table. I think they'd be more worried about trying to gauge the target of the reaction – e.g. if I post something about politics and you use the angry reaction, it's much harder for a machine to tell whether you disagreed with me or were directing some righteous indignation at the subject of the story and that's the most valuable bit of info to know for deciding which candidate or party's ad to show.
  - criley2 11y ago
    I think it's far more than "the size of the lookup table" because that implies that each emoji has one purpose (like the Facebook 5 have one purpose). Facebook's five choices are clear and universal human emotions that leave very little room for subjectivity. Emoji, on the other hand, are used as a famously arcane new language where each symbol has many potential uses, as a pictogram in conjunction with others, or as multiple uses per emoji, as viral "inside" jokes meaning completely different things than depicted (tree, fire, or pineapple are often used to mean a drug, but how do you know when a tree symbol means a drug and when it means a pine tree?) "X_X face" is often used to mean sexytimes, but the X_X emoji is also used to mean exasperation. Sad, happy, angry, these are simple to work with. But how do you classify Back-Button? What does a user think of a post when they rate it "Alien-Face". When they use "Skull/Crossbone" are they saying danger/poison, or death, or Halloween, costumes, a movie? I'm not sure you could ever get to an adequate level of programmatically understanding the intent behind emoji, but I think that it's not too difficult with 5 universal emotions.
greggarious 11y ago
Useful _to the user_. With a smaller set of emoji, you can analyze what text often is coupled with what emoji to help infer the meaning of text automatically. Great if you want to serve ads based on private messages, less of a concern if you just want to deliver a useful product.

by jawns 11y ago

uptownJimmy 11y ago

I disagree: Slack tends to be used by work-related groups, where people are already semi-prepared for what any one of their co-workers might post in the company Slack channel(s). Facebook is absolutely correct in keeping a very tight rein on this stuff, and in making the options uniformly "cute". If emotions start running too high, people will start abandoning the entire platform, I think.

onewaystreet 11y ago

Slack's usage is tiny compared to Facebook's. Facebook has to account for a dozen things that Slack doesn't. The big one is all of the different cultures that use Facebook.

criley2 11y ago

You can put emoji in a comment for similar effect. The facebook system allows a few critical things: - a simple tally of reactions. With an open-ended set of emoji, it's a bit silly to tally emoji responses. With 6 options, the tallies are interesting. - advertising. These six actions are a known quantity and can be baked into their advertising and display algorithms at every level. Using emoji, you'd have to build some kind of emoji-emotion-algorithm which classifies the use of all emoji in real time to a small set of factors for use in the algorithm But yeah nothing is stopping you from filling up facebook messages and comments with :poo: emoji and stickers and gifs.

acdha 11y ago
> - a simple tally of reactions. With an open-ended set of emoji, it's a bit silly to tally emoji responses. With 6 options, the tallies are interesting. Slack's implementation is worth using to question whether of your speculated problems would actually be significant. It updates the tallies in real-time and requires only a single click to increment the count. Although people could use any emoji, in practice there are only a small percentage which are relevant and people tend to add to previous ones rather than add a random new one. > - advertising. These six actions are a known quantity and can be baked into their advertising and display algorithms at every level. Using emoji, you'd have to build some kind of emoji-emotion-algorithm which classifies the use of all emoji in real time to a small set of factors for use in the algorithm If an advertiser was trying to do this, they'd have to do all of that work either way – the only difference is the size of the lookup table. I think they'd be more worried about trying to gauge the target of the reaction – e.g. if I post something about politics and you use the angry reaction, it's much harder for a machine to tell whether you disagreed with me or were directing some righteous indignation at the subject of the story and that's the most valuable bit of info to know for deciding which candidate or party's ad to show.
- criley2 11y ago
  I think it's far more than "the size of the lookup table" because that implies that each emoji has one purpose (like the Facebook 5 have one purpose). Facebook's five choices are clear and universal human emotions that leave very little room for subjectivity. Emoji, on the other hand, are used as a famously arcane new language where each symbol has many potential uses, as a pictogram in conjunction with others, or as multiple uses per emoji, as viral "inside" jokes meaning completely different things than depicted (tree, fire, or pineapple are often used to mean a drug, but how do you know when a tree symbol means a drug and when it means a pine tree?) "X_X face" is often used to mean sexytimes, but the X_X emoji is also used to mean exasperation. Sad, happy, angry, these are simple to work with. But how do you classify Back-Button? What does a user think of a post when they rate it "Alien-Face". When they use "Skull/Crossbone" are they saying danger/poison, or death, or Halloween, costumes, a movie? I'm not sure you could ever get to an adequate level of programmatically understanding the intent behind emoji, but I think that it's not too difficult with 5 universal emotions.

greggarious 11y ago

Useful _to the user_. With a smaller set of emoji, you can analyze what text often is coupled with what emoji to help infer the meaning of text automatically. Great if you want to serve ads based on private messages, less of a concern if you just want to deliver a useful product.