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.