I can count on one hand the amount of people I know that do no use Facebook. Its one of the most popular apps on both Samsung%20Galaxy Note 4 SM-N910H Black Factory Unlocked International ModelAndroid and Apple%20iPhone 6, Space Gray, 16 GB (Unlocked)iTunes, and at times consumes large amounts of our day. I know not all of you spend hours each day on Facebook, but I bet it is safe to say that a majority of us check Facebook at least once a day. I’m not saying that is a bad thing, or that you are wasting time when you browse your Facebook. I am just simply stating that Facebook is apart of our everyday life now.
Facebook has become such a piece of our lives that we end up sharing almost anything. We then sit back and ask ourselves “I wonder how many comments and Likes I am going to get out of that one”. On the other hand when we read a great post the first thing we do is it that little blue “Like” button.
Have you ever had the desire to dislike something someone posts? I know I have on more than one occasion! Today, Mark Zuckerberg had his second public Q&A session. In this Q&A session Zuckerberg did not indicate that they would implement a Dislike button, but wants to be able to give more ability to how people share their emotions and reactions to those emotions in other ways than an approval.
In the Q&A session Zuckerberg was asked:
Judging by the success of the Like button, has there been any discussion of a dislike button?
Zuckerberg’s response was ” You know we’re thinking about it on the Dislike button. It’s an interesting question, Right? Because there are two things that it can mean, and we’re considering and talking about doing one and not the other… The Like button is really valuable because it’s a way for you to very quickly express a positive emotion or sentiment. When someone puts themselves out there and shares something and some people have asked for a Dislike button because they want to be able to say “That thing isn’t good”. And that’s not something that we think is good for the world. So we’re not going to build that.
I don’t think there needs to be a voting mechanism on Facebook about whether posts are good or bad. I don’t think that’s socially very valuable or good for the community to help people share the important moments in their lives.
But the thing that I think is very valuable is, there are more sentiments that people want to express than positivity or that they “Like” something. You know a lot of times people share things on Facebook that are sad moments in their lives, or are tough cultural or social things and often people tell us that they don’t feel comfortable pressing “Like.” Because “Like” isn’t the appropriate sentiment when someone lost a loved one or is talking about a very difficult issue. So, one of the things that we’ve had some dialogue about internally and that we’ve thought about for quite a while is what’s the right way to make it so people can easily express a broader range of emotions: to empathize or to express surprise or laughter or any of these things. And you know you can always just comment, right? So it’s not like there isn’t a way to do that today, and a lot of people are commenting on posts all the time.
But there’s something that’s just so simple about the “Like” button. You know if you’re commenting, a lot of the time you feel like you have to have something witty to say or add to the conversation. But everyone feels like they can just press the “Like” button and that’s an important way to sympathize or empathize with someone in an important moment that put themselves out there to share. And giving people the power to do that in more ways with more emotions would be powerful, but we need to figure out the right way to do it so it ends up being a force for good; not a force for bad and demeaning the posts that people are putting out there. So that’s an important thing. We don’t have anything that’s coming out soon but it’s an important area of discussion.
The first thought that comes to mind is, how do you implement something like this and not provide the ability for people to abuse it, or use the function as a Dislike button for other posts? While a Dislike button would be a great feature and would probably “stir the pot” I think people should have the option of doing so. They are already doing so by writing negative comments why not make it simple?
Lets get this discussion going. What are your thoughts? Should Facebook implement a Dislike button so you can let people know when you don’t like a post? Or should it be used in a way for you to “easily express a broader range of emotions”? Let us know in the comment section below.