If you’ve been irritated, or even annoyed, about the unavailability of a Facebook Dislike button for some time, the wait is finally over. The company’s co-co-founder Mark Zuckerberg confirmed the eventual arrival of this feature during a question-and-answer session in September 2015. Since the introduction of the Like button, back in 2009, it’s not only become a way of communicating, but certainly a way to measure engagement.
It’s going to be tricky to see how the social network will design and roll out the so-called Dislike button. The Like button was a runaway success — on a daily average, it generates over 50 million Likes. In addition, one in every five websites uses Facebook’s feature, and thousands of marketers and advertisers utilize this to measure audience metrics. Here’s some more info about it.
How Will Facebook develop the Dislike Button?
As of now, there is no definitive date as to when this new Facebook button goes live. With that being said, Zuckerberg did hint to some degree how it would function. He asserted that the purpose of the button is not to turn the Facebook platform into a forum where people vote up or down people’s posts. In other words, Facebook is going to come up with a way that can effectively express empathy without jeopardizing the user experience and avoid an uproar.
With 280 million friend requests sent daily on the social channel, over four billion videos watched, 350 million photos uploaded daily along with 150 billion “moments,” changes once again will come. This also means that for the various industries (telecom, retail, business, finance, etc.) who have an e-commerce website, a plugin, or an application program interface (API), or just any other integration into Facebook, they will have to update and make a handful of tweaks once the button is released.
Pros and Cons of the Dislike Button
The availability of a button that offers sympathy or a dislike for a certain post is not unprecedented. Other existing social networks, like YouTube and Reddit, still have the traditional buttons to comment, share, and like or dislike a post. It is a bold move that shows Facebook’s interest in retaining their user base and competing with Google’s video streaming service.
Since the news was made, there have been scam posts on news feeds claiming to have gotten an early and all-exclusive installation of the Dislike button. Word to the wise: do not follow or open these posts. The claims are bogus and lead to intrusive surveys looking to get sensitive information, according to Hackread.com reports. When an official announcement is made, plenty of websites, experts, and news agencies will alert users on how to go about getting the button, so do not fall for a classic trap.
The implementation of this feature with Facebook will further make interactions more meaningful and bring greater connectivity between users. What may be a hurdle for a large majority of the community is that they will have to, yet again, update current settings to facilitate this brand new incorporation onto an extensive existing list of plugins for Facebook.
The Takeaways
Since the initial public offering, Facebook has become a profitable company and shaped up to be a clear front-runner in the social media race. The last thing the company needs is a controversy on the day of launch or users finding something seriously dysfunctional. They have to be mindful of past mistakes with regards to privacy settings and be able to mitigate any potential bad press.
The social giant did delay the Dislike button for some time. How this new functionality works will no doubt have to be intuitive, not to mention relevant, to Facebook users.
Featured photo credit: Sean MacEntee via Flickr via flickr.com
