Facebook Messenger app gets mentions and reactions

You’re familiar with reactions on Facebook’s main app, right? Well, that feature is making its way to Messenger in hopes of making it easier to communicate in group messages within the app. Aside from that, the social network is also introducing an @ mentions system, too. When it comes to reactions you get all the ones you see on Facebook itself plus a new thumbs down option. This gives you one more option to react using emojis within Messenger. Who says you need words these days?

Now, if you’re in a big group chat and want to call out a specific person, you can just type in the @symbol to notify them to join the conversation. The person you mention will get a notification to join said conversation. This message will be highlighted in blue to help catch them easily. These new features are said to be coming to Messenger real soon.

Source: Android Central + Wired

Facebook rolls out ‘Messenger Day’ to users worldwide

The Snapchat stories clone from Facebook first debuted in Poland around September last year. Now, it looks like Facebook’s Messenger Day is ready to go live for all users around the world. According to the social network, it is now live for all Android and iOS users around the world. If you’ve used either Snapchat or Instagram’s own stories feature, you know how this works. You can use the built in camera of Facebook Messenger to take photos that you can add graphics and text to so you can show how your day went. These posts will be live for 24 hours before these disappear. Having yet another Facebook service copy Snapchat shows how prevalent images are for communicating these days. Even the New York Times wrote about how big role Snapchat and images play in communicating with others are.

Source: The Verge

Facebook Messenger gets the dislike button we’ve been waiting for

The dislike button something a lot of Facebook users have been asking for but it isn’t coming to the main app, instead it shows up on Messenger. The social media giant is testing out reactions with a small group of users. And aside from including the usual reactions you can do for Facebook posts, there’s also the thumbs up and thumbs down (a.k.a. dislike) options. However, Facebook says this is more of a “no” button than dislike.

Reactions option can be activated when you hover over messages sent in a thread. You can tap the emoji button and select the reaction you want to make. This shows what statement you are reacting, too, which will come in handy if you’re in a group thread and delayed responses cause confusion about the conversation. It is similar to Slack’s Emoji Reactions and the recently-added Tapback emoji on iMessage.

Source: Tech Crunch

Facebook brings back chatroom feature in Messenger

Sometimes you need someone to talk to about your still growing stamp collection, your young niece or even your closest cousin might not be the proper audience for that. You might soon find people from your “tribe” with the revival of a Facebook featured called Rooms. It lets you enter a group chat with people who share a specific interest, and they don’t necessarily have to be your friend or acquaintance on Facebook. It was a standalone app back in 2014 but Facebook had to pull the plug when social-networking app Room claimed the social media giant stole the idea.

Facebook resurrects the idea for Canadian and Australian users but now has it within Facebook Messenger. It’ll allow you to create public rooms to chat about anything you fancy. You can opt to start a private room as well.

Source: PCMag