Other than both being pictographic, I’m not sure emoticons and reactions are that related. Emoticons are either objects (neither here nor there for our purposes) or facial/bodily expressions. Reactions are emotional or high-level responses to information.
You can’t really express the thumbs-up reaction with a facial expression emoticon. You can use a smiley face or something similar, but thumbs-up means approval, not happiness. If someone says “I’ll be five minutes late—start without me” I don’t want to express happiness at this, but I do want to acknowledge it and (if this is the case) say it’s OK. A thumbs-up does this wonderfully: by definition, it means I have acknowledged the message, and it signals approval rather than disapproval, but nothing else. You can’t really do that with emoticons.
I think there are lots of situations in which reactions can do things emoticons can’t, and I’ve found that I notice nice opportunities for reactions more when I’m in an environment in which they’re readily available.
Other than both being pictographic, I’m not sure emoticons and reactions are that related. Emoticons are either objects (neither here nor there for our purposes) or facial/bodily expressions. Reactions are emotional or high-level responses to information.
You can’t really express the thumbs-up reaction with a facial expression emoticon. You can use a smiley face or something similar, but thumbs-up means approval, not happiness. If someone says “I’ll be five minutes late—start without me” I don’t want to express happiness at this, but I do want to acknowledge it and (if this is the case) say it’s OK. A thumbs-up does this wonderfully: by definition, it means I have acknowledged the message, and it signals approval rather than disapproval, but nothing else. You can’t really do that with emoticons.
I think there are lots of situations in which reactions can do things emoticons can’t, and I’ve found that I notice nice opportunities for reactions more when I’m in an environment in which they’re readily available.