As I’ve been aching for a dislike button in Facebook for some time, this article seductively titled “Should Facebook add a dislike button?” instantly caught my attention; after all, why would anyone doubt that?

And mostly, I agree with the Pete, in that companies certainly wouldn’t want anybody to comparatively weight the Likes versus the Dislikes on their page. In a way, I think it’s somewhat short-sighted of them (as getting feedback from consumers is the golden rule to improving how you are perceived), but on the other hand, simple Likes/Dislikes don’t give out much information, and I’m pretty sure Facebook comments cannot be considered as constructive feedback.

To sum up, a Dislike button may or may not be in Facebook’s and in advertiser’s interests, from a business perspective.

But how about the user perspective? Here’s a quote that I strongly disagree with:

Like buttons are about connection; Dislike buttons are about division.

No they’re not.

Disliking something is just as connecting a statement as liking something. Electric car activists are not connected to one another by their fondness of electrons flowing through copper wire: they are because they dislike fossil fuel cars. The Wikipedia team brought hundreds of thousands of contributors together because of their collective distaste of the old way of doing things (too restrictive, not evolving fast enough, etc).

And this is how social signaling works, too: who we are is defined by what we dislike just as much as it is by what we do like.

Facebook is still about social interactions, right? Or has it morphed into an advertising platform already?