Facebook is about to begin testing alternatives to its "Like" button and Irish users are to be among the first people in the world to have access to the new options.
From tomorrow, users in Ireland and Spain will have access to six other "Reactions" as well as the standard "Like" button, enabling them to express how they feel about what they are seeing in their news feeds.
The new text and emoji style icons include "Like", "Love", "HaHa", "Wow", "Yeah", "Sad" and "Angry".
The move comes just weeks after Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed that the company was examining alternatives to the "Like" button.
For many years, Facebook users have been calling for options, because "Like" is not always an appropriate way of expressing how you feel about something you see on the social network.
Some users had called for a "Dislike" button, but Facebook has resisted these calls, out of fears that it could be used for what it called "down voting" - in other words online bullying and trolling.
Speaking to RTÉ News from Facebook's headquarters in California, Product Manager Chris Tosswill said the new features would give users more ways to interact with posts.
He said Ireland had been chosen along with Spain to test the new buttons because both nations are very interconnected, making them suitable places to run the tests.
Mr Tosswill said while cyberbullying is always top of the minds of people working at Facebook, they are confident that the new buttons would not be used in a negative way.
He said they would closely monitor the reaction of users in Ireland and Spain and make changes if it is deemed necessary.
He acknowledged that in time the buttons could be used by Facebook to help provide more tailored content for users, but for now the focus was on testing what users thought of them.
The new features could prove attractive for advertisers too, as they should allow Facebook to learn more about what people like and dislike.
Gareth Lambe, head of Facebook in Ireland, said: "It's exciting that Ireland's Facebook community will be one of the first to participate in testing these new ways to express reactions.
"With over two million Irish people actively logging onto Facebook every day, they'll now have more ways to show how they feel - whether that's happy, sad, funny or thought-provoking."
"Reactions" will be available to all Facebook users in Ireland, across all platforms, from tomorrow.
