Facebook’s ‘Reactions’ Feature Will Challenge The ‘Like’ Button

To give more depth, we rounded up the analyst notes that dropped shortly after the earnings call, which also map out predictions for the company for the year ahead.

Reporting fourth quarter earnings after market close Wednesday, Facebook released a slew of new metrics showcasing its strength in mobile.

Facebook shares rose more than 12 per cent in after-hours trading to $US106.51.

Chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said that 2015 was a “great year for Facebook“.

Facebook said 1.59 billion people come to the social network at least once a month, up from 1.55 billion people in the third quarter.

Facebook Reactions was widely embraced by users in testing countries a year ago.

However, the company is very clear about how important video is for its business.

Facebook users will soon be able to express more than a simple like with five emoji-like “reactions” debuting in the next few weeks.

The Messenger app is adding payments and customer-service functions for retailers, developing artificial intelligence for its digital assistant, “M”, and integrating transportation features that can hail an Uber and communicate with airlines.

It has 1.04 billion daily active users (DAUs) while mobile DAUs were 934 million on average for December 2015.

Google is now on the look-out for additional virtual-reality experts, an indication that is trying to be at par with Facebook in a still-nascent market that may revolutionize computing.

Facebook’s strengths such as its robust revenue growth, largely solid financial position with reasonable debt levels by most measures, good cash flow from operations, growth in earnings per share and expanding profit margins outweigh the fact that the company has had somewhat disappointing return on equity.

Groups is Facebook’s first major product to reach the one-billion user threshold.

Associate Professor David Glance, director of Centre for Software Practice at the University of Western Australia said the “Like” button had been problematic for advertisers because it didn’t cover the subtleties. “We’re also exploring ways to give people a dedicated place on Facebook for when they just want to watch videos”, said Zuckerberg. They are also bullish on the potential for Instagram, the photo-sharing service that has more than 400 million regular monthly users, to become a significant source of revenue in the future. “Our community continued to grow and our business is thriving”. It is much more likely that users will use Reactions than comment – Facebook’s users click Like 6 billion times a day.