Like or fave?

There’s this flourishing ‘like & fave’ culture in social media that intrigues me. Different media use it in different ways and a ‘like’ on one site seems more important than a ‘fave’ on another.

I was one of the first Flickr-users, way back in 2004 and as far as I recall, it was the first time I came across the possibility to fave a picture. Until this day it has been one of the most useful features of this site for me because it allows me to: a) show my respect for somebody’s work, and b) build a nice collection of favourite pictures from all over Flickr. A pretty organised collection at that as I can search and filter it in various ways. YouTube faves work in a similar way but YouTube offers an extra: you can ‘like’ a video by giving it a ‘thumbs up’.

Twitter also lets you ‘fave’ someone’s tweet to build a collection but for me it’s too fleeting a medium to use that collection the way I use it on Flickr. The tweets I’d like to save in any way usually involve links that I can bookmark – so why save the tweet?

Facebook has many ways to show your preferences. You can like anything: a status, a video or picture, a whole page, even a comment! Now this is where a true ‘like & fave’ culture is developing, with its own meticulous rules. You can like a video or picture in the same way you would on YouTube but you cannot fave them to build a collection. In that case you will have to ‘share’ the link on your own profile, which is of course the ultimate ‘like’ as the original poster will see that you liked it enough to want to share it on your own wall with your own contacts. That way it becomes a personal ‘fave’.

You can like a status to indicate that you’ve been there or that you agree. And liking a comment can mean anything from ‘I agree’ to ‘I wish I’d come up with that’ or just ‘I hear you’. Liking a page (or a group) is like subscribing to a YouTube user’s account or adding a contact on Flickr: you get to see their updates/videos/pictures on/in your wall/stream/email. It filters the information on your wall to suit your interests.

Facebook also has ‘incoming’ likes from other websites. I see increasingly more pages that use this feature where you can not only ‘share’ the page or website (which is often a tad too much honour) but also ‘like’ it so that it appears as a simple statement on Facebook or Twitter.

Finally, there’s the call for a ‘dislike’ button on Facebook. It’s obvious why Facebook doesn’t offer this – they want to keep things positive. If you don’t like it, just ignore it or don’t click on a link. Sometimes however, you wish to show your appreciation but because of the nature of the message it seems inappropriate to ‘like’ it. How to handle this without risking abuse of the button?

It happens every day on YouTube which does offer a ‘dislike’ button. This button (the ‘thumbs down’) isn’t used to indicate that you appreciate the posting while disliking the nature of the message. It’s largely used to vent frustration, like so many comments on YouTube videos. The ‘if you don’t like it, just ignore it’ doesn’t work quite the same here. I even suspect some people take pleasure in seeking out videos they can put abusive comments on. I know it forced me to publish my videos friends only.

All in all, it looks like all these Facebook features offer the most detailed ‘diary’ on your wall. It shows your status, your activities & likes, both on FB itself and incoming. With all the liking, sharing and filtering going on, you can easily imagine using it as your homepage to keep updated on all things you care about. It’s the Daily You, tailor made.