Advancements in technology and adoption rates of personnel communication devices over the last decade or so have been nothing short of astonishing. But no matter how high tech we become, nothing compares to actually talking to someone; face to face. The pure artistry, the genius of conversation between humans can never be matched.

Typing or writing something isn’t the same as talking face to face because a lot of it gets lost in translation. Gone are all the subtle facial gestures, movement of the eyes and if you’re like me (I’ve been told I’m very animated) then all those hand and body gestures get lost as well.

The other day I was on Facebook, checking on things and doing a little housecleaning. As I was reading various posts by friends and laughing at various pictures and you tube videos posted when I came across a posting by a friend who was going through some hard times personally.

There is no need to go into specifics but it’s safe to believe and have absolute faith in the fact that you would not want this to happen to you. It’s one of those things that makes you stop for a second and really thank God for what you don’t have as well; at least I did. I wanted to express my support for my friend in their time of need when I came to realize that the “like” button isn’t always appropriate for the situation. In the case of something like this I would be more inclined to send a private message anyway, but it would be nice to have more options on how we respond other than like. Keep the same idea: something quick and simple, but give us more options. We don’t always have the time or energy to write a response for everything.

One way you could go about doing it would be to have blank presets that you could use. Just type in what you want and have it there to choose from a list. You could limit the number to five or so and allow the user control on what to be able to see or not. If you don’t want obscene words popping up, you could block them out. You could even have it so that when someone scrolls over the word you’ve chosen, a description of it pops up; like wordpress does with categories.

For all I know I could be “using it wrong” and the feature has been there this whole time. As soon as you get use to one version, they go right ahead and update it. Which is fine right? If it makes it better then sure, go ahead. The only thing is, lately I don’t think the updates have been what people necessarily want. I can say that at least for me, I could do without some of the things they’ve added.

Not to mention all their privacy  issues gets the X-Files tune stuck in your head for days.