The “Like” button.

It’s turning up everywhere.  What did we do without it?  It was first introduced through Facebook to replace the “Share” and “Become a Fan” button on February 9, 2009¹.  As the designer of my Ning, I had Ning.com announce to me that it would be implemented throughout the site.  As the writer of this blog, which I transferred from another hosting site, having the “Like” feature was one of the first concerns I had about plug-in availability.  I wanted it.  I needed it.  I knew I could create my own “Like” button code here.  All good, but what if someone doesn’t like the “Like”?

One day in the future, will there be empirical evidence that shows us that people through their pictures, posts, blogs, sites and everything else which weren’t “Like”d enough are demonstrating lower self-esteem, lessened abilities, and have considerably diminished capacities in life?  Will there be comparisons of those who are liked and those who are not?

Juxtaposed to these thoughts, will people and entities with hundreds of thousands of trillions of likes get swelled heads or encounter other issues that are yet unknown to us?  We know that online popularity can turn you into a celebrity and possibly even a very rich person, but what are the consequences?  Will they be the same as people who become famous in real life?  Is that possible anymore?  Also, if they are “Like”d hundreds of thousands of trillions of times, can they put this on their resume?  Maybe they don’t need to.

Another thought that comes to my mind is, how many “Like”s can counters have?  The web continues to grow.  Eventually will it become too saturated?  Along those lines, what is going to happen with domain names and emails of the future?  For example, will generations from now become those of 100 character email addresses.  People who want Brad123@email.com will have to become Brad1234567891011121314151617181920@email.com.  I am talking 100s if not 1000s of years from now.  The best ones will be taken. How will the internet as we know it develop into something that we don’t?

For now though, choose to “Like” this article if you like.

¹“What’s the history of the Awesome Button (Eventually that became the Like button on Facebook)”