Facebooks rumoured Dislike button, which was hinted at by Mark Zuckerberg in a Q&A last month, is set to arrive in the form of Reactions, a series of emojis that will expand the way users can react to posts with a set of six different emotions.

The new feature enables users to replace the traditional thumbs up Like with icons symbolising love, laughter, happiness, shock, sadness and anger. Facebook had previously faced criticism for the limits of the Like button, especially when it came to posts conveying sad news such as deaths or illness.

In addition, the growing use of mobile devices meant that an increasing number of people dislike typing out full responses to posts, due to the size limits of keyboards mobile handsets. With Facebook relying on user engagement to function as a business, ensuring these people continue to interact with posts has become a growing concern for the social network.

The initial roll out of the feature will be limited to Spain and Ireland, to test the feature with both English and non-English speaking users, before making any necessary adjustments and rolling the symbols out further.

The Reactions will appear across both mobile and desktop versions of the app, on all posts in the News Feed, whether they are from friends, business pages or advertisers. A small series of icons underneath posts will indicate how various people have reacted, in a similar manner to how Likes are currently displayed.

To complement the launch of Reactions for users, Page owners and advertisers will see an updated analytics dashboard that provides them with a more granular view of how people are reacting to their posts, which will enable them to fine tune their content even more.

Currently, there are no plans to roll Reactions out to Facebooks other products such as Messenger or Instagram. While Messenger already has a full set of emojis plus stickers which can be used to convey reactions, Instagram is still limited to Likes and comments, meaning that adding Reactions or a similar feature could be on the cards.