Facebook Inc. recently held a “Compassion Research Day” in order to improve the company’s understanding of the benefits of compassion.
During the day, a software engineer at Facebook, Dan Muriello, revealed that a “while back” another software developer at the company had worked on a hackathon project to change the “like” button to “sympathise”.
It would work for every post 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.
Hackathons are events at the Facebook Company where the company’s engineers get together and brainstorm new ideas. Developments such as Facebook Chat and the “friend suggester” are all products of Facebook hackathon events.
Facebook holds “Compassion Research Day”
