The awkward moment, when the Like button on Facebook seems to be inappropriate, might be avoided in the future as the social network contemplates on another option for users. An engineer at Facebook has disclosed that the company is mulling a "Sympathize" button that suits posts about death, unemployment, breakups, and other entries considered to be on the gloomy side of the spectrum.
Dan Muriello revealed during the Compassion Research Day, a company event held annually, that one of his colleagues designed a Sympathize button that can be considered proper for certain status updates and posts. The discussion about the possibility of introducing such button popped up during one of the company hackathons.
"It would be, 'five people sympathize with this,' instead of 'five people 'like' this. 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," said Muriello.
The discussion about the Sympathize button during the company event was triggered by a question from an attendee who asked if the company can come up with something applicable for awkward situations such as death when a user just cannot click the Like button to react but want to do something to acknowledge the post.
Facebook makes use of hackathons to brainstorm for fresh and out-of-the-box ideas that may help improve the features of the social network. While it was a very productive discussion, there is no guarantee that the Sympathize button will finally be rolled out to Facebook's one billion-plus users soon. A lot of products and ideas explored during hackathons do not materialize. However, hackathons have also been the breeding ground for the best ideas that made it to the website such as the Like button, Facebook Chat, Timeline profiles, and friend suggester.
"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," a Facebook spokesman told The Huffington Post.
Just like the Sympathize button, there has been a long-standing clamor to have a "Dislike" button to express disapproval. It has not materialized yet.
