On ‘liking’; the terminology of social media

The concept of ‘liking’ is something that very much could be a very useful and beneficial feature, both to individual users (who want to effectively ‘save’ something for later) and to a larger network of friends or strangers sharing interests (who all benefit from good content being visible and filtered by their peers). But I’ll get to my opinion on this functionality and benefit in time.

Firstly, the terminology – I think it’s all wrong. Just think of the obvious problems with the word ‘like’, obviously implying one’s approval of something. It’s this ambiguity that presents a problem – to me, it seems perfectly obvious that to ‘like’ something implies that I like the piece of content, be it a video, photo, status update or news story. However, this can be almost indistinguishable at times (entirely with status updates and news stories, I believe) from showing one’s appreciation of the content itself.

The importance of this distinction becomes clear as soon as you open an international news feed in – for example – Google Reader. If I find the article interesting, helpful or whatnot, then at present I am able to ‘like’ it – and this is fine; I do appreciate the article as being either interesting or useful, and I would encourage others to read it, as I feel that they may too. What isn’t fine is the unclear distinction between this – demonstrating my appreciation for the article as well written, or whatever else – and what actually just seems like me expressing my enjoyment at the idea of whatever tragedy has befallen the world on that day.

This is all the more important on Facebook, where things (obviously) get personal. Several weeks ago, many of my friends were sharing, through statuses, the horrid news that someone who they know had died in a car accident. Each of these updates has many ‘likes’ – clearly other mutual friends expressing their horror, shock and upset over their friend’s sudden death. But again, to ‘like’ the news that a dear friend has died just doesn’t feel right at all, even if it can be rationalised as people ‘liking’ the status, not the horrible news it brings.

So, in thinking of alternative wording for this feature, I return to the functionality: why is it useful or beneficial to ‘like’ things? I think there are four key answers to this question: I believe people want to use ‘like’ to save, share, agree, and appreciate.

These are my initial thoughts. A further developed follow-up, which addresses these ‘functions of the like button’ in greater detail, to follow.