Love trumps sad and angry: Facebook reveals the heart is its most popular emoji

  • Facebook launched its popular reaction emoji's for posts one year ago
  • Since they've been released they've been used over 300 billion times
  • The love reaction accounted for more than half of the reactions this year
  • Mexico, Suriname and Chile were the top three countries to use reaction emojis
  • The US was the 8th highest on the list for using Facebook reaction emojis

Facebook launched its popular reaction emoji's one year ago and it's been revealed that the 'Love' reaction is the most popular one. 

Among the available reactions are 'Like', 'Love', 'Haha', 'Sad' and 'Angry.'

Since they've been released, the reaction emoji's have been used over 300 billion times.

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Facebook launched its popular reaction emoji's in 2016. Among the available reactions are 'Like', 'Love', 'Haha', 'Sad' and 'Angry' (pictured)

Facebook launched its popular reaction emoji's one year ago and it's been revealed that the 'Love' reaction is the most popular one. Among the available reactions are 'Like', 'Love', 'Haha', 'Sad' and 'Angry' (pictured) 

The love reaction accounted for more than half of the reactions people used on Facebook this year (not including the standard like reaction). 

Christmas 2016 had the highest number of reactions used on posts in a single day, a Facebook representative told New York Magazine.  

On Christmas day of 2016, the 'Love' reaction was also the most used emoji. 

The love reaction was the most popular emoji this past year despite the 'like' thumbs up already having existed to react positively to posts. 

The ability to react in more ways than simply 'liking' a Facebook post had been a long time coming.

In 2007, a Facebook user started a group to try to convince Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg to add a 'dislike' button option for posts. 

But when Facebook finally released its new reaction buttons, it didn't include a 'dislike' option. 

In 2007, a Facebook user started a group to try to convince Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg to add a 'dislike' button option for posts. But when Facebook finally released its new reaction buttons, it didn't include a 'dislike' option

In 2007, a Facebook user started a group to try to convince Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg to add a 'dislike' button option for posts. But when Facebook finally released its new reaction buttons, it didn't include a 'dislike' option

Instead, the Facebook reaction emoji's included an angry emoji and a crying emoji which also express negative emotions. 

Mexico, Suriname and Chile were the top three countries in the world using Facebook reactions. 

The US was the 8th highest on the list for using the most number of reaction emojis. 

However, these rankings may change given the reaction to White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer's briefings.

During the first half hour of his first press briefing, a Facebook live stream of the briefing received 21,000 angry emoji reaction. 

THE CONFUSING WORLD OF EMOJIS 

Researchers showed the emoticons vary so radically across platforms such as iOS and Android that their meanings get easily muddled.

The researchers found that participants disagreed on whether an emoji was positive, neural or negative a quarter of the time, even when rating them within the same platform.

They found Apple's 'crying laughing' emoji was the most confusing within the platform, followed by the 'grinning' one.

Researchers showed that emojis vary so radically across platforms such as iOS and Android that their meanings get easily muddled. The emojis illustrated above are meant to be the same, but vary dramatically across platforms

Researchers showed that emojis vary so radically across platforms such as iOS and Android that their meanings get easily muddled. The emojis illustrated above are meant to be the same, but vary dramatically across platforms

In fact, Apple Google, Microsoft, Samsung and LG all had the same problem with the 'crying laughing' which was the most confusing within all the platforms studied. 

The clearest on iOS was found to be the sleeping emoji. 

LG, Microsoft and Google's clearest emoji was found to be the 'love' face.  

 

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