Facebook Inc founder Mark Zuckerberg wants people to be able to quickly express broader ranges of feelings on the social network, but a “dislike” button does not make the cut.
During a question-and-answer session with an audience at the Facebook headquarters in northern California, made available online on Friday, Zuckerberg gave a thumbs-down to the idea of a button to register disdain for posts on the Web site.
“That’s not something that we think is good for the world,” Zuckerberg said, expressing concern that “like” and dislike buttons could turn into a voting system to judge posts.
“The thing that I think is very valuable is that there are more sentiments that people want to express,” he added.
While Facebook’s well-known thumbs-up like buttons let people easily show support or enthusiasm for posts, some poeple think the sentiment is off-target for status updates that concern news of death or other sadness in the lives of users.
“We are talking about a right way for people to easily express a broader array of emotions,” Zuckerberg said, giving examples such as empathy, surprise or laughter. “We need to figure out the right way to do it so that it is a force for good and not a force for bad in demeaning the posts that people are putting out there.”
No changes along those lines were on the immediate horizon.
Facebook would also risk upsetting advertisers by giving members a quick way to tag marketing messages with dislikes, according to analysts.
Zuckerberg said that Facebook members are free to comment on posts, but can wind up feeling pressured to be witty or insightful.
In related news, Facebook-owned Oculus VR Inc moved closer to launching its virtual reality gear on Friday with fresh acquisitions of startups and talent. Oculus announced it bought two-year-old Nimble VR and a second startup called 13th Lab, but did not disclose financial details.
Nimble specializes in hand-tracking technology “which has the potential to be a great [virtual reality] user experience,” Oculus said, while 13th Lab is focused on real-time 3D modeling such as simulated visits to the pyramids in Egypt or the Roman Colosseum, it added.
Oculus also announced that it has hired motion-capture expert Chris Bregler, whose recent projects include visual tracking for the films Star Trek Into Darkness and The Lone Ranger.
“Nimble VR, 13th Lab and Chris will all be winding down their existing projects to focus on VR full-time at Oculus as part of both product engineering and Oculus Research,” the company said in a blog post.
Facebook early this year bought the virtual reality headgear company Oculus in a deal valued at US$2 billion.
Zuckerberg said that the acquisition of Oculus was a long-term bet that making the social network more immersion-focused would pay off.
“People will build a model of a place far away and you will just go see it, it is just like teleporting,” Zuckerberg said.
The 30-year-old tech titan billed the acquisition as part of a drive to build the “next major computing platform that will come after mobile.”
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