reddit Tag

The Truth about Facebook’s Upcoming Dislike Button

The Internet has been taken by storm after Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement that Facebook is working on a ‘Dislike’ button. The Dislike button is one of Facebook’s most frequently requested features, likely because many other formats online (such as Reddit and Disqus) allow for a downvoting function to contrast the upvoting function that is equivalent to the Facebook ‘Like’ button. However, there are plenty of people who feel like a Dislike button would promote negativity, pettiness, and add to the existing problem of cyberbullying.

Most newswires seem split in their views; some believe that the Dislike button is a necessary feature that Facebook has been missing for years, while others believe that there is nothing good about the idea of a Dislike button. In either case, a lot of these newswires seem to be misinformed entirely about how this Dislike button is going to work. Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement specifically mentioned that he doesn’t want the Dislike button to be equivalent to Reddit’s downvote; he wants this button to allow users to show empathy and express themselves in more ways than the Like button currently allows, saying “Not every moment is a good moment.”

In reality, this upcoming Dislike button likely will not be as simple as a literal Dislike button. It’s more likely to take the form of a ‘Sorry’ button or something similar to that. This way, users would be able to express their condolences in situations like death, loss of a job, or the end of a relationship. Though Zuckerberg specifically mentioned that the Dislike button was being worked on it, it likely will not appear in the form that many people are expecting. The new feature, however it may appear, is likely to be rolled out in the coming weeks.

The Aim to Consolidate Your Social Media

These days, many people find themselves with profiles on many different social networks: one person alone might have separate Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, LinkedIn, and Instagram accounts, on top of plenty of others. As these social networks continue to grow, some app developers have been trying to find ways to make it easier to combine all the functions of these social networks into one consolidated application. This is something that has been handled in different ways, depending on the app.

Many of these apps work directly with existing social networks. For example, Snowball is an application that allows Android users to have a universal inbox for different messaging clients. This way, users are able to view all of their messages on one simple home screen. The app includes messages from Facebook Messenger, Twitter, WhatsApp, Snapchat, Google Hangouts, and more, as well as including basic text messages in the mix. Comparatively, on iOS, an application called Accounts has been launched, which is more of an attempt to create a universal address book. It pulls from Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Reddit, and more and attempts to aggregate these accounts to make things easier for its user base.

Other new applications seek to enhance the features of your existing social media apps. For instance, Xpire is an app for iOS that’s focused on the ephemerality of all of your social networks. It aims to allow your Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr posts to effectively self-destruct in the same way that Snapchat automatically allows you to. This app also has other features, such as allowing users to determine how much inappropriate content appears on their Twitter account (which may lead users to want their tweets to be a bit more ephemeral).

Still others are trying to launch mobile apps that will work as replacements for other social media apps, by offering multiple features all in one. One notable instance of this would be Selphee, an app that has been billed as Snapchat, Instagram, and Vine combined. Even Selphee, which features all of these functions, still allows users to share photos and videos through existing social networks, however. Each new app appears to be one step closer to our social networks being nearly interchangeable and smoothly working together as cogs in a social media machine.

Digg Users Don’t Dig Digg

Sure. Digg’s heart might be in the right place, but in practice, does the system fall short? That’s the argument made by many Digg users who are having more than a little trouble getting their news stories seen or heard on the user-generated news site.

Digg was originally established in response to the mainstream media, which many felt did not portray or distribute news according to what would actually benefit or educate users. They also had complaints about the powerful systems of people (and companies) that control these news outlets.

But it seems that Digg has just become a smaller approximation of that very system. Because users’ stories gain popularity based on user reviews, the “powerdiggers” (those who have accrued a powerful network of fellow diggers) are much more likely for their stories to be seen, read, and shared.
(more…)