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.

Form vs function - why (micro)blog?

A few interesting things I came across last week, pointing in the same direction. Someone complaining about nobody apparently missing his tweets that hadn't come through for quite some time. When nobody notices, why twitter at all?

Then someone else worrying about the nature of his own tweets, compared to the blogposts he used to write. While his former blog read as a diary -an external memory-, the chronology of tweets offered at best a fractured, incomprehensive and utterly useless list of seemingly random quotes (rephrasing and exaggerating a tad here...). Had he been wasting his time microblogging?

And then there's the 'outsourcing of memory through Google' that I wrote about in my last post. I've heard this before. When printing was invented, pessimists predicted that it would be the end of human kind as we knew it. People would become lazy and dumb because they would no longer have the need to remember or recall. Before long, they wouldn't memorise anything anymore and their brains would shrivel.


For a few years, I've used Flickr as an emotional diary. Pictures speak a lot of words, you know... I was into a few hobbies that were easy to catch in images and evoked reactions from likeminded people. We felt connected through these images, captions, tags, comments & faves.

Then I started using blogging alongside to Flickr, because some work-related stuff was more suitable for posts. Again, there was a community of people that shared information and opinions through comments, blogrolls & trackbacks.

I've stopped blogging the way I did when I started checking and doublechecking whether somebody else had already blogged about this new thing. Twitter has neatly filled this space. Anything new is on there within a minute of publication elsewhere in the world. It's kind of an express RSS-feed, a digital marquee. And I don't feel the need to be the first to announce the news anymore so I'm more a consumer than a producer on Twitter :). Moreover, tweets are disposable. If I want to keep a link someone tweeted, I keep it somewhere else - not by retweeting it. I never look back.

Like everybody else, I started using Facebook as well. Now here I am a true prosumer. Facebook has gradually become the emotional diary of choice for me, with things like Flickr, YouTube, blogposts, events & links coming together. And here I DO look back, my notes, links and embedded clips neatly stored chronologically. Everybody has their own 'blog' on Facebook and the 'home' setting acts like an RSS-reader of sorts.

I don't really care if I miss anything. Important issues will inevitably come to me sooner or later. My contacts are my filter on the world. Their interests and daily doings are reflected on my screen. We are connected in many ways. Even with the ones I know IRL, there's an extra connectiveness.

And then I felt the urge to start blogging again. I needed my own emotional diary again. If I don't blog for a week, nobody will notice and that doesn't bother me. I'm still visible elsewhere. This is MY space.

picture: British Library, London