Building upon the prior article on Digital Touch coming in the new iOS 10 release this Fall, let’s turn now to an interesting feature also part of the messaging package: inline reactions.
This new feature allows you to react to messages without sending a new message back. I can’t help but feel a thread of lineage that goes back to Facebooks “like” and stickers feature when I see this. By long-pressing (but not too hard for those with force touch devices) on a received message, you can give it a thumbs-up (or down).
At first this really had me confused and wondering where the applicability was. But once I got my hands on it and was able to use it in a real session back and forth with someone, I realized that this adds a nice parallel communications channel that is typically lost or shoe-horned into the typical conversation flow.
For instance, I get general “LOL” reactions to comments that pop in just as I hit send on a new message. If I am not paying attention,it could look like someone finds it hilarious that I am sharing some tragic bit of news instead of the prior bit where I was talking about accidentally smacking my knee on a table.
Will it take some getting used to? Definitely. Does it add a lot to the conversation? Let’s just see. What do you think?
This week, I would like to challenge you to take the photo of my coworker, Eric Dosmann, found below and do your worst to it. The funniest response (I will be judging) will win a $10 Amazon gift card (delivered digitally). To be entered, please email info@eimagine.com including your alteration of Eric’s photo along with your name and an email address to send the digital gift card to (in case it is different than the one you are sending the email from).