Facebook has been testing a pair of new features on its messenger app for a while now and is now ready for a global rollout. The Messenger app has been updated with Reactions and Mentions.
The Mentions feature allows you to ‘mention’ or tag your friend in a group chat, notifying them and making sure they receive the message amongst the chaos of a group chat. You can tag a person by typing ‘@’ followed by their name, as simple as that.
If you are worried that someone might spam the mention feature and keep alerting and notifying you, Messenger allows you to turn off the Notifications. It is a good inclusion, as it can be pretty annoying if you are being alerted over and over.
The Reactions feature, on the other hand, lets you react to a message, GIF, image, stickers, and emojis. There are seven emojis, Love, Smile, Wow, Sad, Angry, Thumbs Up and Thumbs Down. We have already seen the reaction feature on Facebook’s Newsfeed when it was launched a year ago, However, they don’t include the Thumbs Up and Thumbs Down emoji reactions.
You can react to a message by simply tap and holding a message and then select the reaction emoji. The Reactions can be used in Group Messaging as well.
Reacting to a message can be quite handy and allows users to react to a conversation faster, while the Mentions makes sure you don’t miss out on the important information in a Group Chat. Combined together, these features may make texting and chat on Messenger more fun and convenient.
These features were spotted by users in Vietnam as it was being tested in that Region. These features will also be available on Work Chat and Workplace, Facebook’s business focused social network. The company has announced that these features have started rolling out and will available globally pretty soon.
