How cool is it to be ‘liked’ online?
For a lot of people who use social networking websites, comments, re-posts and likes are forms of validation. Here’s why...
But the question is, why do we get that little thrill when we log on to our social networking page and see an increased number of ‘likes’? Why is the measure for popularity for a new rock group the number of comments or likes?
Is it perhaps because it is so much simpler to measure and quantify ‘likes’ as a measure of popularity? Similarly, you will find posts from people or establishments on your news feed asking you to like their page and in return, perhaps as a friendly gesture, do the same for you, if you have a page to promote. Arjun M, who is the admin of a photography appreciation page says, “A certain number of ‘likes’ doesn’t necessarily correlate into legitimacy. For example, a person might actually have fewer than 1,000 friends perhaps but will have 2,000 or even up to 5,000 ‘likes’ for a fairly ordinary picture. And then you’d only have to scroll to the photo comments section to see the kind of things people say. It’s not uncommon for people to have completely unrelated discussions on the thread, adding to the total comment count. So, it might look like something that’s being talked about and popular, but actually isn’t.”
There’s another angle to this online trend. “I noticed that a few people in my friend list, who are known faces, posting a status that went something like: ‘Hi guys, my friend list has reached its limit and I cannot accept any more. So please go to my fan page and add me there’ or ‘Hey guys, I will be closing this page from next month, so for pictures, news and more please go to my fan page and add me there’,” he adds. “When a personal page is changed to a fan page, that person’s friend list, if big enough in number, gets automatically transferred to the fan page, giving the impression of added popularity,” says Sunil B, who used to be a freelance web designer.
But do more likes translate into more visibility online? Apparently, it is true. The algorithm of a popular social network reads the number of likes/shares/comments a person/fan page or establishment gets and the more those numbers are, the more exposure to certain people and the profile it belongs to, will get. It is somewhat similar to the way search engine algorithms work. The more popular a certain search term is, the higher up it will show in the search results page.
All of these ‘likes’ and numbers contribute to a person’s ‘EdgeRank’, which is nothing but a metering system that assigns your profile a score, which dictates how your page interacts with other people’s profiles. In other words, it dictates how often and how high up you show in someone’s news feed. So, the next time you are tempted to hit that button, give this a thought.
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