Facebook-style reactions are coming to Outlook

[midian182]

In brief: Have you ever felt the need to respond to an email with an instant laugh or sad face, as popularized by social media and messaging platforms? Probably not. Nevertheless, Microsoft is introducing them in a future update for Outlook that will add Facebook-style reactions.

Microsoft’s product roadmap shows a feature in development called “Outlook for the web: React to an email message.” It describes users being able to react to an email without sending one of their own through a range of reactions.

“Outlook on the web is expanding the existing ability to like email messages with a thumbs up icon. In addition to likes, users will be able to add sentiment for love, laughter, celebration, thanks or show sadness,” Microsoft writes.

Being able to Like an email has been a feature in Outlook for the web for years. Instead of writing a reply, you can click on the thumbs-up icon in the upper-right corner of an email. If someone Likes your message, a thumbs-up icon appears in the email with a number indicating how many Likes it received—you can also hover over the icon to see the names of those who Liked it.

It appears Microsoft decided just being able to show one’s appreciation for an email wasn’t enough and will be introducing a range of new emotions. They’re expected to arrive for the Outlook web app sometime in March.

The Like button still isn’t available on Outlook’s desktop app, so it seems the new reactions are also limited to the web version—which will probably come as welcome news to many users.

How do you feel about the merging of reactions and emails? A terrible idea or a natural evolution in keeping with the times?

Main image credit: Rawpixel.com

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https://www.techspot.com/news/88491-facebook-style-reactions-coming-outlook.html

 

[OptimumSlinky]

... why though?

 

[QuantumPhysics]

How bout ALL of these fakeass Social Media stop being punks and just give us a THUMB UP and THUMB DOWN?

Here’s my question: what’s the point of not allowing us to have a thumbs down button when you can just as easily laugh at the person by typing a laughing emoji???

It occurs to me that you’re doing more trolling by laughing at the person then you are simply by putting a thumb down.

The thing that bothers me more than anything is that all of the social media companies specifically are gaming us psychologically and only a person who is experienced in human psychology can understand what they are doing and how they are doing it.

They claim that they are trying to inspire engagement but the engagement that they are forcing through their guidelines is only encouraging trolling.

I remember in the good old days where if you had thumbs up it was counted and you saw how many thumbs up you had and when you had thumbs down it either was counted as thumbs down separately or it removed the number of thumbs-up you had for a net score of thumbs up.


Having an ANGRY emoji or a LAUGHING is so ridiculously esoteric that I don't even know the intent.

For example: if there's a story about Police brutality , how do I know if the "anger" emoji is targeted at the cop or the suspect?

So what does it do?

It encourages people to comment and their comment is most likely going to express frustration - even if that leads to trolling or arguments.

It's so stupid.

 

[Uncle Al]

A rant from Quantum? I can't recall the last time I saw one this long ..... but I'm giving it a thumbs up anyway!

 

[bviktor]

They might as well start showing the likes in the desktop version, too. It's so silly that only those on the web can see these.

 

[Danny101]

Never asked for this.