Why launch of new Facebook button could be ‘game-changer’ for media

Facebook's launch of what is being described as a "dislike button" could be a "game-changer for the media", according to one expert.

According to one piece of research, released last month, Facebook already accounts for more internet traffic to news sites than Google.

David Benigson, chief exceutive of media monitoring business Signal, said: ‘‘The 'dislike' button could be a real game-changer for the media world. Now that Facebook's "news feed" is a finally living up to its name as a way of sharing news, publishers will be able to access clear analysis of how their content if being perceived, and they can adapt accordingly.

''Facebook likes and shares have been the yardstick for understanding the popularity of a story, so negative feedback will create a more nuanced view for publishers; a layer of sentiment analytics that gives publishers much more insight than the systems they use on their own websites.''

Writing for The Telegraph, Carl Miller, Research Director of the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media said: ‘’It almost certainly will not be a 'dislike' button.''

At a Q & A session Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said on Tuesday: ‘‘It took us a while to get here because we didn’t just want to build a dislike button because we don’t want to turn Facebook into a forum where people are voting up or down on people’s posts.

‘‘People aren’t looking for an ability to down vote other people’s posts, what they really want is to be able to express empathy.’

‘'I do think that it is important to give people more options than just like as a quick way to emote and share their feeling on a post.’’