Do We REALLY Want a 'Dislike' Button or the "Old Version" of Facebook?

I use my Facebook page for personal connections. I do have a few professional contacts on there, but for the most part I use it to show off my family photos, keep in touch with long lost friends and feed my addiction to Farmville. Due to the varied professions of my friends on Facebook, I'm finding they too have opinions about what they want from their user experiences. And when you think about it - the Marketing and Social Media professionals are NOT the dominant user group on Facebook, they are one of the many. The teachers, nurses, finance, operations, construction and business services (a sampling of my friends' careers) folks are just as engaged with this tool as we are.

I see my friends indicating 'support' for two different causes on facebook. Usually they flock to the "We want to old Facebook" groups and fan pages any time Facebook makes a change to their user interface. They also really want a dislike button. While I can understand their hesitation over the changes Facebook makes, I do think Facebook's slower roll out of new features is helping them adjust to the new functionality of the site with less pain. I don't think they consider the necessity of the changes...would you really want the facebook you had when you started using it...especially with the other social tools evolving and expanding. I am sure they wouldn't be satisfied with the first ever version of Facebook. They don't realize the changes they are making to Facebook helps them become savvier users of internet technologies. They just like the comfort of what they know and change can be frustrating. I always see my friends adjust to the new features and before you know it, the current facebook version IS their 'old' facebook.

As for the "Dislike" button, I know most people would use this to show support when a friend puts up posts such as: "I have a cold" or "I got laid off!" But what about the faux friends? Some people would be so crass as to put up the "dislike" flag when someone puts up news like "I'm having a baby" or "I got my dream job". Or, bringing my Farmville addiction into this, part of the benefit of playing the game is to allow it to post updates to my friends so they can get coins in the games. It would be a bummer if every time I posted something for my co-players (about 10% of my Facebook friends) and someone who didn't play the game put up "dislike". It would be mortifying if I put up pictures of my beloved family and someone decided to 'dislike'.

I know you can argue for the reverse, but the term "Like" is generally positive. It's got a good connotation in general which gives us the positivity/warm fuzzies/happy vibe. If we get the dislike, it allows negativity to seep in and could cause a lot more drama on Facebook. The absence of this option keeps us civil and, this is probably the reason why we only have the option to "like" things on facebook. And I LIKE that just fine.