Dislike Button: What this Could Mean for Brands on Facebook

Recently, Mashable posted an article in their Social Media section that posed an interesting question: Should the new Facebook gestures allow a dislike button?

Since the announcement at the F8 conference, developers have been enthralled with the new Open Graph system that will allow apps to model user activities based on actions and objects. Instead of simply “liking” an object or page, users will be able to share an action that they perform with an object, such as “watching” a “movie” or “cooking” a “recipe”.

This has raised some scrutiny, however, due to the possibility of creating negative actions such as “dislike” for pages and posts. As stated in the Mashable article, Facebook has blocked the option of adding a “dislike” button, but what about synonyms to this word?

Mashable presents an interesting point: Advertisers primarily fund Facebook, and if the option were there to “dislike” a brand or an update, this could cause some controversy.

Take the recent Chapstick social media nightmare for example, a brand receives negative feedback from a fan and deletes all comments associated with it, causing a social media uproar.

Now, imagine if anyone were able to share his or her negative opinion on Facebook by “disliking” a brand, object or person. Not only would this cause a lot of chaos, there would be a lot of unhappy advertisers on Facebook.

From a brand standpoint, what is your opinion? Do you think a Facebook “Dislike” button is a good idea?