For those of you who are self-conscious when it comes to Facebook’s read receipts on Messenger, get ready to be made more painfully aware of when your friends are “connecting” with you. According to new reports, Facebook is considering allowing users to see when others are commenting on a post — sort of like that typing bubble that pops up when you’re in iMessage (or the one you can see in FB Messenger).
The feature, which was first spotted by Twitter user Amber Dickso on Friday, tells you that “A friend is writing a comment,” because you always want to stick around and be the first person to like or reply to conversations online, right?
In speaking to Tech Insider, Facebook confirmed that this is indeed a new feature the social media giant is testing out, potentially for further implementation. “We’ve heard from people that they want their experience on Facebook to reflect the real time conversations they have,” a spokesperson said. “So we are testing adding a line above the comment box of a post that indicates when a friend is typing.”
Facebook has made a number of changes to its user interface in the last several months, from the more amusing (like allowing users to react to different stories with emotions) to the practical (like its safety check-in feature). The social media platform is also known for testing out changes with small portions of its user base, sometimes with controversial results. In 2014, the company came under fire for toying with users’ emotions when it adjusted the number of positive versus negative posts seen by a randomly selected group of over half a million people. Branded as a psychological study examining the spread of emotions on social media, it set off a number of decidedly angry emotions from users across the country.
But seeing a typing bubble likely won’t be nearly as contentious.
