Does Facebook Need a 'Sympathize' Button?

Maybe you too have had this experience: you're browsing Facebook and see a sad status update from an acquaintance or friend you've lost touch with. They've been fired; they've had a death in the family; maybe they just had a bad day

You want to show that you care, but you don't know them well enough to say anything that doesn't sound trite. Then you see that someone has — perhaps accidentally — hit the Like buttonWhatever you do, you think, don't be that guy.

One Facebook engineer has come up with a solution for such a situation: a Sympathize button. We learned this Thursday from Facebook's annual Compassion Research Day — yes, the social network devotes a whole day to sharing various ways it's trying to "build empathy and foster trust" with users. Engineer Dan Muriello revealed that one of his colleagues had designed the Sympathize button during a recent hackathon. Read more...