New emojis for status updates

No longer will Facebook users only have the  little blue thumbs up to acknowledge posts.

The social network which boasts over 1.5 billion users has announced it will soon be adding new "reaction buttons" that will increase our opportunities to express emotional over posts.

'Liking' something is not always the appropriate response to what we see on Facebook, so the additions of the five animated emojis might be just what you are looking for.

The emojis are listed as love, angry, sad, wow and haha.

Techworm has reported the global rollout will follow  on from a period of intense local testing in Spain, Ireland, Chile and a number of other countries.

Bloomberg has reported the reactions will be available in coming weeks.

According to Bloomberg,  the decision to add the reactions involved consultation with sociologists to carefully create a range of emotions that could accurately take into account huge variety of posts that are put on Facebook.

Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg had said the reactions were intentionally designed as an alternative to the Dislike button, a feature that users have long been asking for.

“Reactions gives you new ways to express love, awe, humor and sadness. It’s not a dislike button, but it does give you the power to easily express sorrow and empathy — in addition to delight and warmth. You’ll be able to express these reactions by long pressing or hovering over the Like button,” he said in a statement.

There was originally a sixth button to be added, called 'yay' but it has since been scraped.