It’s pretty interesting to see all the people rallying around an open “Like” standard. It was just like the developers who suggested we needed an open tweeting platform once Twitter became so successful. In turn identi.ca was born and most people don’t use it. Every great idea launched on the web is now immediately followed by a bunch of open web advocates claiming that the “locked in” model is scary. The drive behind the movement may not hold any bearing but it appears to be in response to a fundamental shift away from links to likes.
The Open Argument
The best way to explain why the “Like” system is so important is to first explain the basis of the existing web and search engines. Right now, Google uses hyperlinks as the standard for determining the relevance of websites and pages throughout the internet. The more links to a given page, the more important it becomes. Right now however, posting links is still an overly complex process as it requires understanding what “<a href='URL'>this text is important</a>” means.
It also requires understanding how properly formatted HTML will significantly help your search rankings. The entire search optimization industry is built on the premise that the internet is not easy to build on top of. Despite the challenges of understanding how to optimize your site for search engines, the existing search industry is fundamentally based on the “open web”. It’s open in the sense that and search engine can crawl across websites and find the links that are on those pages. As changes are made, the search engines need to reindex those sites.
In Facebook’s new system however, the information is not available for anybody to access. As Alex Iskold accurately states, “The missing bit is that Facebook appears to be the only repository of data in this equation – and that makes the whole offering seriously closed.” Every person (who is also a Facebook user) that visits a site can instantly “like” an article and it doesn’t require knowing how to code a hyperlink in HTML.
Reduction Of Friction Means More Data
In addition to simplifying the process for the majority of users who visit a site (not necessarily easier for publishers, in that a link is still easy for most publishers) to state that a piece of content is a good one, Facebook has also forced publishers to include more structured data about content. While Google can still crawl the RDFa-formatted metadata that publishers must now include, Facebook is locking everybody else out from accessing the massive amount of “Like” data.
While Facebook has effectively reduced the friction for information flowing into their system, they’ve also blocked out the other major players from accessing this data (Google, Yahoo, etc). The act is of course in Facebook’s own interest and despite the protest among the new group of “OpenLike” supporters, it’s likely that this model will work for Facebook. If all goes well, we may find out that the “Like” has in fact become an effective replacement to the modern link.
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A link is a way for people to find new interesting stuff, from within a page or website they already found interesting.
A like is a way to express you find the page or website you are on interesting.
They are – in essence – totally different things.
I personally think Facebook is wrong in catering things my friends like. For example, the frontpage of a newswebsite – let's say CNN, would be rearranged according to what articles and/or subjects my friends liked. This won't work for me, and I'm sure it won't work for a whole lot of people.
[Just my two cents though, thanks for the article.]
Comment by Davy Buntinx — April 26, 2010 @ 8:02 am
Liking is very public in its application and thus different from a link. Likes are invitations for you and everyone to like it too. The best application so far is likebutton.me Links have far more uses, especially when you don't want to publicly share your thoughts.
Comment by Quinton Cartwright — April 27, 2010 @ 3:01 am
If you wanna ask any person to like the post.. It has diff ways to move on with..
1. With Link : Complicated – As need to establish the link and then blah blah blah to invite people.
2. With LIKE: Smartest way – to do the same without the need of blah blah blah
Comment by Siri — April 27, 2010 @ 4:19 am
yes ofcourse we can call it as the next and modern version of LINK as you said .. gud post yaar
Comment by Siri — April 27, 2010 @ 4:26 am
Davy,
What was fascinatingly explained in this article is that it apparently doesn't really matter if you or I see what our friends may have liked about a certain website we happen to be visiting. Odds are that zero of our friends will have gotten to new content before we got there. But, diabolically one might say, this doesn't matter at all. =)
What will matter is that an algorithm resulting from the collected data could quickly compete with the almighty Google PageRank which has reigned supreme for 10 years as the be all and end all of whether a piece of content on the web was important or not.
Google PageRank's algorithm has had, as its main component, a calculation of the number of backlinks to webcontent from other websites/webpages. This was and is considered to be a good indicator that any given content is relevant for a given search term. This is why Google earns $Billions.
The above article explains correctly that creating backlinks is often a painstaking process for webmasters, who have to type links to other sites in HTML code. Often the webmaster needs permission from a marketing department or CEO to be allowed to link to another website. What the above article does not say, but I might add, is that much of Google's PageRank relevance is a measure of various corporate or organizational decisions to link to other content or back and forth with each other. Often formal agreements exist in which websites link back and forth, including agreement on what will be said in the anchor text (the text in the link).
If billions of Facebook "Likes" start happening per day, where anchor text is replaced by keyword rich publisher meta-data, keyword searches could quickly find more relevant content via Facebook Search than Google Search.
Why? Because 2 billion new Facebook "backlinks" per day would quickly dwarf the new link output of webmasters (or bloggers) per day. In a few months time, the relevance of keyword searches based on this huge database of links (likes) could render PageRank relatively obsolete or severely weakened.
Thus we could be looking at a long sharp dagger pointing at the heart of Google (and Bing).
Google can still make a huge deal with Facebook asking to be their distributor in which they pay Facebook an astronomical sum to incorporate the billions of Facebook Likes into Google PageRank.
Similarly, Microsoft can supercharge Bing with this (and give Facebook half the winnings).
Facebook would, in any event, be in the catbird seat of the Search industry.
What Facebook needs to do now is make sure there is no user revolt.
How can they do that? Well, first, Facebook needs to assure all of us that our visits to other websites will NOT be recorded unless we specifically click on a Facebook Like button on the other websites.
Right now, I've opted-out because Facebook has not assured me *enough* that, if I am logged into Facebook on my computer, that Facebook won't record where I am surfing regardless of whether I click Like or not. I prefer to remain logged in to Facebook at all times, so it was just easier for me to opt-out of this than to ever see a published list of all the bird-watching and basket-weaving sites I like to visit in my spare time. =)
If they assure me and others well enough, I can see myself opting-in to the service and, at least, there will be no user revolt to stop the freight train that could take much of Google's ad revenue.
Comment by Facebook User — April 27, 2010 @ 4:44 am
Interesting but with lots of potential privacy issues that are sure to confuse and frighten users, if not cause a revolt. In particular this bit from the Facebook blog which the majority of Facebook users won't realize until it's too late…
"When a like makes a connection in your profile, you can control who can see that in your Facebook profile by editing your "Friends, Tags and Connections" settings on your Privacy Settings page. Remember that *even if you limit* the visibility of a connection, it remains as *public information* and may appear in other places on Facebook.com or be accessed by applications and websites."
Comment by bWEST — April 30, 2010 @ 8:27 am
the effort it takes to link to something shows *that* much more validity of the support of the site. in the case of the "like" format, users are often bribed or forced (by information rewarded or withheld, respectively)into supporting a topic. thus, it seems the accuracy of how much users "like" an obama page, might be based on a free entry for a trip to hawaii. =P
Comment by Schlep Trix — June 24, 2010 @ 9:54 am
[...] how relevant that content is for various keywords. We’ve been discussing for a while how the like could kill the link, however what we haven’t discussed is the main problem with [...]
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