The ability to show collective digital appreciation is a product of the social media age. Previously you'd show appreciation via a round of applause, writing a favourable review or simply telling someone to their face that you liked what they'd done. But now you can press on a heart and the number beside it accumulates, visible to all, providing a comparative snapshot of what the wider community thinks.
Facebook's long been predicated around likes, although in their case 'like' often means 'please sign me up for a stream of information'. Twitter switched from stars to hearts in 2015, making more explicit that clicking on a tweet meant you were giving it the thumbs up. Success on Instagram is very much about likes, the more the merrier, confirming that your framed shot was curated to perfection. Many YouTube videos round off with a pleas to 'like and subscribe' because that's the way some creators get their money. And TikTok operates particularly strongly via the 'like' concept, or at least I assume it does because I'm not hip enough to have direct experience.
Even within the same system 'like' means very different things to different people. Some users are 'serial likers' who'll click the heart on almost everything you do, as if what they're really saying is "yes, I saw this". They're quite useful for keeping your base numbers up, if a tad over-enthusiastic compared to everyone else. Some people 'like' fairly often or sometimes, while others have a much higher trigger point and if you ever get their approval you've done well. But most people never touch the like button at all, or only once in a blue moon, so even the most-liked posts are still the product of a tiny minority of followers.
Alas Blogger doesn't do likes, it's not part of the underlying infrastructure, which means appreciation of what you've written has be sourced in different ways. One way is to keep track of visitor numbers and whether they're going up or down, and another is to use the total number of comments as blunt numerical feedback, but neither of these are the direct frictionless indicator that 'likes' would likely be.
I get some idea of likeabiity from my @diamondgzrblog Twitter account which automatically tweets a link to every blogpost I write (along with up to four photos). Most of my @diamondgzrblog tweets get at most 5 likes, often rather fewer, indeed the most common number of likes tends to be zero. If I ever get into double figures I know I've done really well, however pathetic a number it may seem. Yesterday I managed more than 40, which is generally unheard of, but that's still a tiny proportion of the 1200 who could but don't. Often the only readers to like a post's tweet are the same three or four people every time, because they're the serial likers, so as metrics go it's hugely unreliable.
I'm not begging, merely pointing out that 'likes' only work in certain circumstances on certain platforms. Also it's just as well there isn't generally an unlike button because that can get quite negative, indeed I can well imagine certain grumpy souls 'unhearting' everything as a convenient way to show silent disapproval.
So today I thought I'd experiment with likes to see how useful, reliable and informative they could be. If you've particularly enjoyed a recent post, or if one of those ginger cats floats your boat, have a heart and let me know. ♥
