Facebook introduces "Thankful" Mother's Day emoji, considers more
On Sunday, everyone's Facebook News Feeds were flooded with Mother's Day posts. While you might have bought flowers or gifts for your mom on her special day, Facebook offered up a digital carnation in the form of a special option: a "Thankful" reaction with a purple flower emoji.
"To celebrate Mother's Day, we are testing the ability for people to leave a flower reaction," a Facebook spokesperson wrote in a statement to CBS News.
Facebook said that, while temporary, the "Thankful" option will be available to people in other countries that celebrate Mother's Day. In each area, the feature is available for about 24 hours, but it might take a while for the emoji to phase out, which explains why some users in the U.S. still saw the purple flower emoji the Monday after Mother's Day.
Even when the emoji vanishes as an option for Mother's Day, it will still show up in a post's reactions count if it was used.
Back in February, Facebook launched Reactions to offer more nuanced, interactive alternatives to the simple "Like." The animated emoji responses to updates posted by your friends and pages you follow extended beyond the thumps-up "Like." They include "Love," "Haha," "Wow," "Sad," and "Angry,"each with a corresponding image.
Will showing thanks on Mother's Day be beginning of a new trend? Facebook says that this is the first time a temporary reaction is being offered around a holiday, but it may not be the last. The social network is seeing how users respond to the feature in certain markets. If interest remains high, there might be other temporary reactions introduced in other markets.
