How did the Like button come about?

In November, fastcompany.com published the story of the button that changed the world, based on the book Don't Expect You to Understand It: How 26 Lines of Code Changed the World, edited by Tori Bosch. Copyright ? 2022 Princeton University Press. Reprinted with permission from Princeton University Press.

We share with you the most important.

Bring me back my 2007

In 2007, Facebook was going through its stride - it already had 30 million users in the summer. And just a year earlier, Facebook was a social network for college students.

Leah Pearlman, one of Facebook's three product managers at the time, pointed out that users had no easy way to express interest in each other's posts. Popular posts received long branches of comments, many of which consisted of just one or two words (such as "awesome" or "congratulations"), and there was no way to find exciting comments in all that noise.

She and several other Facebook employees decided to create a universal, seamless way of expressing approval on the social network. They gave the project the codename "Props".

But what form Facebook's version of "props" should take and how it should work proved controversial. On 17 July 2007, the team created the first "Awesome" button. It was well received and given the green light for development.

The button sparked excitement throughout the company. The advertising team thought it could be used to show people better ads. The development team thought it could be used to weed out bad apps. The newsfeed team thought it would help them decide which posts to show in people's feeds (at the time, the main factor in ranking the feed was the number of comments received by post).?

Awesome VS Like

The button had to be versatile and relevant in a variety of contexts. Therefore, seemingly trivial designs took on undeniable weight. What should it be called? Should there be a button with a negative connotation? Should it be accompanied by a counter?

At the time, the "thumbs up" icon on Digg (a news web portal) and the "like" button on Vimeo (a video portal) were among the few precursors. Incidentally, the not-so-successful social network Friendfeed also launched a "like" button in 2007, although Facebook employees claim they didn't notice it.

At least a few people on Facebook voiced concerns that turned out to be providential.

There was concern that "effortless communication" would "exclude thoughtful engagement because people are lazy and will choose to be lazy" if given the opportunity. Engagement in posts and time spent online would also decrease.

Who saved Like

Soulless data and statistics saved the Like. During testing, Facebook data analysts found that popular posts with a button actually generated more interactions than posts without one. This one turned out to be crucial. Two years later, by February 2009, Zuckerberg had approved the final version of the "like" button, drawn by Soleio Cuervo, a former Facebook designer in Photoshop in the form of a thumbs up.

But coding the "like" button involved much more than just drawing it. Each like had to be stored in a database that linked it to both the post itself and the person who liked it.?

On 9 February 2009, Pearlman announced the launch of a "Like" button on a Facebook post - the company's version of the blog - called "Like this".?

She encouraged users to make extensive use of the button, and users agreed. The "like" button became an instant hit, and Facebook soon found ways to incorporate it into the fabric of not only its platform but the entire internet.?

How like evolved further and how it became part of our culture are in our next posts.