Facebook develops 'sympathise' button

Facebook has devised a "sympathise" button as an
alternative to the "like" button for use in certain
situations.
If a user selected a negative emotion from Facebook's
list of feelings in a status update then the "like" button
would change to "sympathise".
A Facebook engineer said at a company event that
the button had been created as part of an internal
project.
But he later went on to say there were no plans to
launch it at the moment.
Facebook were holding a "compassion research day"
where members of the public and researchers are
invited along to "improve [Facebook's] understanding
of the driving forces and benefits of compassion".
Hackathon
In a question and answer session an audience
member asked if Facebook had thought about
changing the "like" button when it felt inappropriate
in relation to what a user had posted, for example
when someone had written that their parents had
died.
Dan Muriello, a software engineer at Facebook, said
another engineer had worked on a hackathon
project "a while back" to change the "like" button to
"sympathise".
It would not work for every post he said but if you tag
a status with certain emotions from a fixed list then
the "like" button would change.
"A lot of people were very excited. But we made a
decision that it was not exactly the right time to
launch that product. Yet," he said.
Facebook hackathons are events where the
company's engineers get together and brainstorm
new ideas.
Facebook Chat and the "friend suggester" facility both
were developed from work at these events.
Source: BBC