WhatsApp Reactions Expanded To Allow Full Use Of Every Emoji

Meta’s WhatsApp division is to roll out an update to WhatsApp that will allow for more personalisation of user chats.

“We’re rolling out the ability to use any emoji as a reaction on WhatsApp,” Mark Zuckerberg announced on Facebook on Monday.

The firm had first announced the feature in April, and began making it available in May, but users could only react with six emoji, namely the thumbs up, heart, joined hands, tears of joy, mouth open and crying face.

WhatsApp Reactions

From this week WhatsApp is making the extended emoji reaction feature available to everyone reacting to messages, and updates to people’s WhatsApp application should take place over the next following few days.

Instead of the usual six emoji reactions, users will be presented with a full emoji keyboard, allowing for example for users to select a different skin tone etc.

Emoji reactions can be accessed by long-pressing on the message and then tapping on the + button, to allow for scrolling through the full emoji list.

It should be noted that rival messaging app Telegram has given users a larger range of emoji reactions for a while now.

WhatsApp for businesses

In May this year Meta began offering cloud-based WhatsApp chat integration for businesses.

The WhatsApp Cloud Application Programming Interface (API) service complements the existing WhatsApp Business app and WhatsApp Business API, which allow WhatsApp users to message businesses via a specialised account.

The cloud-based service enables businesses to, for instance, create a “customer service” link on their website that launches a WhatsApp chat.

Meta said at the time it would charge businesses on a per-message basis for the service, while a limited version of it would be free for smaller firms.