Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg said in a recent Q&A session that it’s considering the introduction of a “dislike” button. The implications for the brands spending millions on reach for their content is huge and they will need watertight guarantees that the button won’t be hijacked by trolls creating trouble.
The message at the moment from Zuckerberg surrounds the need to fix the issue of being able to “show empathy” – yet the obvious solution of a little thumbs down next to the thumbs up has seismic implications for brands that have built their social strategy around Facebook’s 1.49 billion monthly users.
A tide of anonymous down thumbs would work against the friendly community that Facebook has tried to facilitate. Imagine being the brand manager of the first page to reach 1m dislikes, or posting a piece of content that’s used as a vehicle by people against your brand.
Content will have to be thought through to a much greater degree and the change may work against the creativity for which social advertising is perfect. Other popular social platforms such as reddit allow users to down-vote content, so why does Facebook need to enter this arena?
We should be in no doubt that there are huge financial implications should a dislike button be introduced on Facebook. In 2014, $11.4bn dollars was spent on the Facebook ad platform, according to Strategy Analytics. That represents a huge chunk of Facebook’s revenue.
As someone who has used Facebook as a marketing platform from the very first day, it’s extremely clear to me that it’s a key consideration for Facebook to prevent people from disliking brands. For years our clients have asked us for more likes than their competitors, for more followers on Twitter and to be the next Oreo Superbowl tweet. We have always taken the stance that reliance on likes isn’t always the correct strategy. Recognition from three really likely customers is going to benefit your business more than 1 million that are maybe not interested.
Over the years many notable research companies have attempted to value likes and other Facebook results with hugely varied findings. A 2013 study by Forrester valued a like at $0.00, while Syncapse said a Facebook fan is worth $136.38 more than a non-fan. However, brands are not going to be in any rush to ditch their accumulated fan/like numbers. These big amounts, rightly or wrongly, will rule social and digital marketing for the foreseeable future.
This causes a conundrum for Facebook. How will they be able to deliver a dislike button that allows us to show empathy for a world event or bereavement, while preventing its use by trolls to bully people? What about its use in the form of people power, to boycott brands? If you can dislike a world tragedy and show your displeasure for it, surely you should also be allowed to dislike a brand that may have not delivered on its promise?
Brands will need to consider the ramifications of maintaining presence on a platform that could showcase their popularity in stark numerical terms.
We wait with baited breath for the beta test and to see what the final roll–out looks like. Facebook’s canny business people will be as sure as they can be that they get this right.
Mark Malone is head of social and content at Feed
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