The appeals for a dislike button on Facebook are mostly emotional. People want to be able to dislike their ex’s new relationship. From an entrepreneur/business perspective of making a better internet (something I discuss here), this serves no purpose. I can learn little about a person from a marketing perspective based on their “dislikes”. Now that facebook is expanding across the internet through open graph though, the dislike button is becoming a useful tool for facebook.
Consider the following situation where open graph (and the internet as a whole) would benefit from a dislike button. Someone has liked Jay-Z and Snoop. Can we assume they like B.I.G? Well they probably do. Say 80% of people that like Jay-Z and Snoop would like B.I.G. and if they haven’t already liked him, it’s just because they haven’t been presented with the option. However, that 20% doesn’t like B.I.G. for a very specific reason. They find him annoying for some reason, in spite of the similarities to Snoop and Jay-Z. If you can’t “dislike” in an open graph, they will keep showing up.
The essential thing here is that a ‘dislike’ is just as valuable as a like. Not showing someone an advertisement that they dislike is just as important as showing someone something they like. This is because you only have so much space, you don’ t want to waste any of it on something that an individual would tell you they don’t want to see if you gave them the opportunity.
