Social media and instant messaging (such as Slack) has made reactions like “thumbs up” ? and other emojis popular additions to everyday communication. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could quickly press like to confirm or endorse something proposed in an email, rather than having to write a reply?

Dave Crocker, well known for his work on email standards and a senior advisor for M3AAWG, recently submitted the draft “React: Indicating Summary Reaction to a Message”. It introduces email to the world of reaction emojis using an additional email header. It could be implemented in the email clients or webmail (MUAs), and doesn’t require any changes to the transport layer. It’s however an early draft with several considerations yet to be discussed, so I wouldn’t hold my breath just yet.

So, what could it look like? I don’t know, but it didn’t stop me from creating the mockup below!