Skype: Too Many Smiley Faces
I noticed a recent change to Skype, specifically in the chat client.
Look at all those smiley faces!
At first, I thought, the person that I'm chatting with is really overdoing it on the smileys. I get it, you're being friendly!
But it turns out: if you hover over the smiley face, it's a "react to this message" button.
Do the Skype product managers really think that "reacting" to a chat message is so common that it needs to have its own icon and menu for every single message?
Or maybe this is more useful in a group chat setting? Is Skype trying to compete with Slack and IRC?
Either way, I found it very distracting, confusing, and unnecessary. Most of my Skype chat is 1-on-1, and this icon is completely superfluous for that. It is only marginally useful for group chat.
I would suggest a single smiley face icon in the "Type a message here" area instead. Skype already has that, but it brings up a completely different menu. Which is also confusing.
If there was a way to turn this off, I would use it.
