Twitter Doesn’t Need ‘Like’. Friendfeed’s Like Is Dumb. Twitter Needs ‘Share’
Twitter’s API Lead Alex Payne has been speaking at the Twitter 140 Conference and I’ve already written today about his announcement that Twitter might be adding geo-referencing data to all tweets – you can vote on my poll about this here.
Alex also mentioned that Twitter will add a new feature similar to the ‘like’ option on Friendfeed and Facebook, which lets users vote up a submission. Twitter already has a ‘favourite’ feature which allows us to save any tweets we desire (I keep all my ‘links of the day’ in mine) but it’s not heavily-used by members, possibly because it isn’t heavily profiled. There’s been a lot of talk on Friendfeed about how good their ‘like’ feature is to Twitter’s ‘favourites’, and as Robert Scoble, arguably the single-greatest Friendfeed advocate on the planet, took the interview with Alex Payne, one has to wonder who did most of the pitching. 
(Alex also stated that Twitter might be adding comments to tweets, which is also a feature on Friendfeed and Facebook, as well as Plurk. I’m fine with this, although I’d very much prefer if it came in threaded messaging format, with a reply link on each comment, as on Friendfeed in particular long runs of responses can be a real pain to follow.)
Here’s my concern, though: the ‘like’ feature is dumb. Really dumb.
It’s dumb on Friendfeed, and it’s even dumber on Facebook, where users regularly ‘like’ things like plane crashes, bomb explosions, the death of Mike Tyson’s daughter and many other tragedies. Depeche Mode fans seem to like the cancellation of concerts, and I also regularly see people liking things that are about them, or that they have written and others have then submitted. Keep that ego in check, won’t you?
It’s not really their fault, as the ‘like’ is essentially the only option they have. But grammatically, and in any reasonable measure of decency when it concerns traumatic events, like is a major fail.
Twitter doesn’t need a like. What it needs is a share.
What Twitter also doesn’t need is to completely scrap the favourites idea. Favourites, in principle, works fine – the problem is that Twitter has never pushed this feature, and for fairly obvious reasons. It’s too one-dimensional. It’s nice to be able to save things for later, but it’s better if anything you’ve saved automatically becomes a recommendation for your network, too.
What Twitter needs to do is repackage or re-code the favourites feature so that all the saves are crawled and indexed. They could then take this data and re-format it so we could see recommendations in various ways. For example:
- By network
- By demographic
- By location
- By hour, day, week, month etc
- By keyword filter
And so on. This would make favourites as powerful and relevant as Twitter search. It could run happily alongside Twitter’s trending feature, or even replace it (as right now it’s really quite useless). It’d be as useful a barometer as re-tweets. I’m not sure when the favourites feature was added to the platform, but there’s a ton of data there just waiting to be mined. Why waste all that effort? Nothing worse than giving people something to use and then pulling the rug from underneath them just because a few folk have complained.
And heck, I don’t care if they rename it – that’s not the point at all. Indeed, it makes sense to call it ‘share’, because that will encourage people to do this. And the more people that use it, the more informative that data will become.
But Twitter, please: don’t call it ‘like’. Like and share are not the same thing. Not all news is good news. Not everything comes with my two thumbs of approval. In fact, few things do, but that doesn’t mean I don’t think they’re important and worthy of the attention of others. This might ultimately be an issue of semantics, but it’s an important one. If I get a like, I want a ‘dislike’, too. But I’d rather have neither.
Like is dumb. Like is a fail. Share is a win. Twitter needs share.
Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!
Loading ...
I agree that like and share signify two different things and having to select like when you mean share muddles their meaning. In my mind, like is a message to the author of a post while share is a message from me to my friends or followers.
When I mark like on my sister-in-law’s facebook post that her school district budget has passed and she will likely have a job next year, I am indicating my pleasure in the news. I would much prefer to see 10 likes than 10 comments that are simply variations on “Congratulations”. This is totally appropriate functionality for Facebook.
Similarly, when I like an entry in a FriendFeed stream, I am indicating to the author that I thought the post was of value to me. I use this particularly when there are already many comments posted and I don’t feel I have anything particularly new to add to the conversation. I just want to provide positive feedback to the poster.
Twitter already has a share function: it’s called retweet. I’m less clear that like is a valuable addition to Twitter. The Twitter stream moves so quickly that retweeting something is more valuable that liking something.
Hi Dan
I think your examples are an excellent way that the like feature can be used on Facebook and Friendfeed – the problem is that they’re both positive. Like falls apart when news is negative or in any way ‘bad’.
It even doesn’t work very well for neutral news. If I write, “Hey, I won the lottery!” that’s not necessarily something people like (believe me
). I think, and I’ve said this on Facebook as well, that if you have a like, by rights you have to have a dislike.
Right now, if you don’t like or agree with something on FB or FF, you either have to comment or abstain. Abstinence can be a very powerful option in social media (as it is everywhere, certainly en masse), but if a thousand people like a post, nobody is going to notice X thousands/million of people didn’t. The mind doesn’t work like that.
Share IS a different function – we both agree here. But if we have to just have one, I’d choose share because it’s applicable to positive, neutral and negative news and content. I also think it could quite possibly replace re-tweets, and as Twitter doesn’t seem too keen on the latter (inasmuch as it isn’t a built-in feature, at least not yet), that may well happen. Shares can easily be tracked, counted and ranked and that’s a very useful too for everybody, especially if it can be filtered in the way I proposed.
Maybe ‘share’ and ‘save’ are what is really needed. One for a new way of re-tweeting, another for personal (and I would propose completely private) bookmarking.
Thanks for your thoughts.
No more with the 90 followers in 16,000 days.. Gah, get some new banners!
Chris Latko’s last blog post..The #fixreplies Kerfuffle
I’m working on it. Having a nightmare of a time trying to figure out the URL so I can block them in Adsense! I hate that garbage as much as you do (and will be publishing an article on all that scam stuff soon).
Sweet looking forward to that post. I have another website that is in dire need of ad removal..
As for Twitter, you are right again. I can’t understand the Like feature in Facebook
Jim Gaudet’s last blog post..Costa Rica Beach Trip
You have valid points on what can be improved for the favorite feature. I alleviate the issue somewhat by RSS feeding my favorites into my LinkedIn group which is demographically distinct. Believe me if I could filter the favorites and provide only specific topics for the various groups I manage, I would be ecstatic. In any event, it leaves room for yet another 3rd party application.
Diane Rines’s last blog post..Why are people going undercover to network?