Then they discover that anyone feel more engaged with "angry" and want more.
.. My real question: How much did they pay buzzfeed to get away with stealing their reaction button?
You hear FB is losing younger users plenty, but as a young r user, from what I have seen, hemoraging maybe isn't the best word. It's more just being used in ways different than originally intended. For people my age (high schoolers and younger college folk), the focus has shifted, I think, from the "media" part of social media to the "social" part. We use it more for the ease of communicating with large groups of people quickly and in one place more than most of us are actually creating real content for the site. Pretty much everyone still has a FB, but mostly, it's for groups and Messenger chats. So, I can see the buttons as being an attempt to help pull some of these types of users back in a bit by allowing for a just slightly deeper level of interaction than just "likes." But at the same time, I doubt it is the right move to achieve that.
Agreed, the group features are great for class projects. Messenger is the way to go when brainstorming where to go have a beer. Events are invites to house parties or birthday get togethers. As for posting content, people rarely ever do. It's mostly big announcements like "I got a job!" or changing your profile pic after a vacation (albums are dead, unless you're the "photographer" of your group). The only people sharing funny pictures or articles on my feed are above 40.