Exactly one year after its launch, the Facebook Like button has become ubiquitous across the web and is still installed on thousands of new websites every day.
That number hasn’t stopped rising since. Facebook said Thursday that 10,000+ websites add the Like Button every day — identical to what COO Sheryl Sandberg said in October last year. In other words, the growth of the Like button hasn’t slowed down in the past six months. The social network says more than 2.5 million websites have integrated with Facebook so far, including more than 80% of the top 100 websites in the U.S.
Facebook’s success hasn’t gone without notice. Google recently launched +1, its answer to Facebook’s Like button, and a study last month by Eventbrite concluded that a “Like” is more profitable than a tweet.
What do you think of the Like button? How has it changed your habits on the web? Let us know in the comments.
This post reflects the opinions of the author and not necessarily those of Mashable as a publication.
Hank Nothhaft is the co-founder and chief product officer of Trap.it, a personalized content discovery platform launching early this summer. Trapit was incubated at SRI and the CALO project.
To the credit of Mark Zuckerberg and Co., the Like button may very well be the most ingenious creation of the Web 2.0 world.
It is the simplest way to express a sentiment of approval and to broadcast that information to your social graph. The Like button has quickly become the dominant protocol for disseminating posts, pages, apps and more. And it’s not surprising that Google has countered with its own +1 concept.
But we still see the demand from users for more granular options, even in something in the form of a “dislike” button or a “love” button. The act of liking, predictably, means different things to different people.
For Facebook, “liking” really just means allowing the liked item to be a part of your network and world. And they’re sticking to it — so much so that Facebook has used the Like button to replace other gestures, like becoming a fan.
Indeed, one button to rule them all.
Except, the Like button and +1 button aren’t ultimately that useful to anyone who’s not Facebook or Google. It’s an early-inning opportunity in the face of something much bigger — true personalization.
Right now we’re all liking things around the web. As a result, my Facebook newsfeed has, ironically enough, come to resemble a Google Reader. It’s filled with updates from media outlets, bands and brands. Oh, and some updates from my actual friends are mixed up in there somewhere, too.
In the best case, the Like button has turned Facebook into the world’s largest, glorified RSS feed. When you click the Like button, you are simply subscribing to an all-or-nothing feed of content from a source. Facebook doesn’t select only those posts with a high likelihood of personal relevance. Facebook has become a broadcast platform. It’s no longer about me.
What we really need is a Me button.
High-Fidelity Interests
Now, Facebook certainly does have some insight into what I care about, articulated through my stated interests and my likes around the web. But these measures are roughly-hewn at best. They’re not adaptive, and they’re not granular.
In fact, they are more aligned with outward expressions, contrived statements of an identity I wish to project, and attributes used in targeting advertising at me.
We are constantly shifting and evolving individuals. Our focus and interests change in real time. Any system that proposes to really know me needs to have an ambient and authentic understanding of how I traipse about these more abstract concepts called “interests.”
The Like button on the other hand is a blunt instrument. Although Facebook can be said to be building a massive interest graph behind all of those likes, we’re talking about a relatively low-fidelity understanding of “me.”
Social is Only Part of the Answer
Conceptions of personalization today have become convoluted, distorted and diluted. The term has been co-opted to describe many things.
But let’s be clear about one thing: The “socialization” of the web is not personalization.
Telling me how many of my friends like an article or page is not personalization, it’s a new form of passive peer pressure or groupthink. Facebook’s idea of personalization has become the Web 2.0 equivalent of the Web 1.0 portal. Saying Facebook knows me because I like NPR and photography is like saying my “My Yahoo” page was personalized because it showed me San Francisco weather forecasts and local sports scores.
Personalization implies a much greater level of control and a significantly more tailored experience than social can ever offer.
Many companies recognize this and are attempting to address the issue. Yet even these services that most purport to establish relevance based on the interest graph fail to provide compelling personalized content recommendations.
These services all rely too heavily on collaborative techniques and misguided and simplistic interpretations of the social graph, or they simply lack the sophistication to scale beyond the same 100 (or 500) media outlets and professional blogs already saturating the echo chamber.
All of these approaches tend to converge within localized topic areas, and that, to put it bluntly, is just boring. It’s also why none of these efforts in so-called personalized content and news have succeeded or caught on with mainstream audiences.
The Me button on the other hand, starts from a fundamentally different understanding of relevance. The Me button is as easy as the Like button. One click to personalize, and to pivot.
It’s All About Me
The Me button understands I’m interested in complex, multi-dimensional topic areas or concepts, not a just sources or keywords.
The Me button moves with me as the content it discovers evolves my interest and knowledge in a topic simply by the act of being consumed. The Me button adjusts volume based on engagement.
The Me button not only makes sure I don’t miss the biggest stories of the day but is also constantly canvasing the nooks and crannies of the web to uncover for me the gems my social network never could.
The Me button combines promised precision and reach of search with the perceived serendipity of social discovery.
It will delight me day after day by proactively and accurately discovering for me the stuff I know I want and the stuff I really want but didn’t know. It will adapt to my evolving interests, continually improving and proactively exploring these boundaries to build a better understanding of … well, me.
In fact, it’s not about understanding the content as much as it’s about understanding me first and foremost. It sounds like a simple shift, but it is radically difficult to achieve, technologically speaking. What I describe is one of the hardest engineering problems of our time.
Therein lies the rub. True personalization is primarily about people, not about what people read, watch or listen to. People grow, evolve and change. We never sit still. We’re always in flux, by nature.
But this doesn’t mean that such a fine-tuned level of personalization isn’t achievable. The Me button is basically a natural evolution in content discovery and has even been positioned by some as the next major phase in the life of the consumer web. And though it’s early in the game, some of the best minds in technology are dedicating themselves to cracking this nut.
From my perspective, the most successful approach to the Me button requires tapping into a balance between its two core components — deep focus on the individual and great sourcing. Though each one on its own is a worthy challenge, the balance between the two is the ultimate and necessary goal.
Deep personalization truly places you at the center of the equation by building a unique and dynamic interest model for each and every user. This model is based on your actual tastes and preferences, not what’s trending, not what’s popular with your friends or people that look like you on paper and not solely on your outward representation in the social graph.
The other piece, great sourcing, has two facets: quality and scope — that is, the required ability to tackle a significant chunk of the real-time web, uncovering those golden nuggets outside the echo chamber, and doing so with a strong focus on the best and most relevant content.
That’s why the Me button doesn’t stop at news. Sure, it delivers to me the best and most relevant news and blog posts on my favorite topics and interests, but it also recommends deals and product information, things to do and even media like videos and podcasts, all picked just for me and based on my current context — from time of day, to location, to the platform I’m using.
The Me button is really a virtual personal assistant in the end — a prosthetic that helps me own the web, once and for all.
Shaken, Not Stirred
Don’t take me to be hating entirely on social, though. A blended approach that uses social for what social is good for is ideal. It’s just that knowing what my friends think only really matters once you know what I think.
Putting my friends before me is putting the cart before the horse. MoveOn.org board president Eli Pariser’s recent TED talk outlines this point pretty well.
He notes that what we need is an information world that “gives us a bit of Justin Bieber and a bit of Afghanistan,” marked by controls that let us filter content by any number of factors — relevance, importance, comfort (topics that can be difficult to discuss or read), challenge level and points of view (with an option to see “alternative”).
The key to successful personalization is remembering that I am both the origin and the target of the system’s relevance. But that said, it needs to expand and routinely test my bounds if I am to grow.
Ultimately, the Me button should operate in a similar fashion, giving me a hearty main course of content selected just for me with sides of the best of what’s currently important in my social network and the biggest or most important stories of the day at a macro level.
The next generation of the web will be naturally and necessarily driven by the potential of personalization, in all aspects from mobile to media. The social web has brought us so far, but in doing so has also emphasized its own limitations in this area. When we finally achieve this goal, the result will be as important and ubiquitous as search or social networking has been in other stages of the web’s evolution. But let’s not water it down with lightweight parameters and misrepresentations of personalization’s true potential.
Interested in more Social Media resources? Check out Mashable Explore, a new way to discover information on your favorite Mashable topics.
Fontself is a font-serving service that’s sort of like the consumer version of Typekit. It lets users use custom fonts on sites like Facebook and Blogger, mostly of the novelty kind — the sort of fonts that a Typekit-toting designer would shy away from, but the average net denizen loves.
Aside from the handful of novelty fonts available in Fontself’s library, the main draw of the app is the ability to print out a template, fill it in with letters, scan it and upload it — creating a font out of your handwriting (or whatever you choose to fill the boxes with).
Today, Fontself announced some more serious additions to the service. The Fontself Developer Network kits allow Fontself fonts to be used in apps, in HTML and in Flash. Previously, Fontself fonts were only usable on a range of supported services, including Facebook, Yahoo!, Myspace, Netlog, Blogger and in HTML widgets that could be appended to a site.
With these new introductions, developers will be able to use the fonts in their applications as part of the user interface, and they’ll be able to allow users to bring their own fonts into the app.
I’m just hoping that I don’t open up Twitter or Gmail one day to find their design teams have moved over to one of Fontself’s colorful novelty fonts. That is when I am officially quitting the Internet.
Will Fontself begin to appeal to serious designers? No. But in Fontself’s defense, that’s not what it’s for. The added developer functionality will help those building frivolous apps that appeal to a certain demographic to add a bit more levity to their interfaces.
Clay McDaniel is the principal and co-founder of social media marketing agency Spring Creek Group. Find him via @springcreekgrp on Twitter.
Do you remember life before Evite, Facebook Events, and Eventbrite? Handwritten paper invitations and RSVP phone calls seem like relics of a forgotten age. The web has dramatically changed the way people plan special occasions. Social media is making it easier than ever before to plan, promote, and execute a wide range of events from industry conferences, client events and partner symposiums, to large social gatherings and charity events. What’s more, social media allows you to solicit feedback and extend the life of your event by inviting attendees to connect via online communities before and afterward.
Whether you just want to generate a bit of buzz or instead have specific goals to increase ticket sales and attract top speakers and attendees, social media can make the planning process smoother by leveraging digital word-of-mouth. Here are eight tips for best results.
1. Establish Your Event-Related Channels
The months and weeks before your event is a critical promotional period. Use every social media channel at your disposal to get the word out about your event, and encourage people to share information on the event in return for small rewards. For example: “Share this event with 20 friends for 10% off your admission.” Start by creating an event page on Facebook and an event hashtag on Twitter, then create an event blog where you’ll post updates about it (new speakers, registration discounts, etc.). Make sure your Twitter hashtag is specific to your event or organization, without being too long.
Once you’ve created these pre-event social links, populate them with lots of content. If it’s a social event, post video or music clips, create a pre-event contest, or connect event-goers through socializing and games. For a social or community event, content should be engaging, fun, and shareable in order to drive word-of-mouth interest. If the event is more corporate in nature, offer fans and followers sneak peeks at topics to be discussed, or special pre-conference articles and presentations.
2. Provide Incentivized Word-Of-Mouth Promotions
Make sure that everyone who follows or likes your event on Twitter and Facebook is rewarded for their interest. Offer fans and followers special discounts or content. To incentivize people to register for the event, offer them early-bird discounts, invites to pre-event parties, or other rewards. If you really want to boost the power of word-of-mouth, you can use tools like Meteor Solutions to identify your key influencers, then actively motivate and reward them for sharing information about your contest.
3. Make Registration Social
Don’t forget to use a social registration service like EventBrite, which not only makes registration easier and more streamlined, but allows attendees to share their event activity with friends. Other popular social event invitation platforms include Plancast and Twtvite. Most of these services are highly integrated with social networking platforms and can be configured with user caps and privacy options.
4. Use Location-Based Services and Checkin Rewards
Geo-location sites let you set up a page with rewards including badges, coupons, specials, or gifts. These location based services are easily integrated with other social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, so checkins will be shared with larger networks. When attendees come to your event, you can reward them for checking in at different stations, panels, or activities. Rewards such as free ice cream, a gift card, or other small incentives can be redeemed after the show.
5. Bring your Event to Life With Twitter
Using social media during an event can mean the difference between a flat, boring affair and one where attendees are engaged and excited. But too much real-time social interaction can also derail the main presentations or talks.
First and foremost, encourage attendees to tweet during the event using the established hashtag. An active Twitter stream during your event not only engages participants in real time but also allows people who could not attend to get a feel for the sessions and topics being discussed. Some event organizers set up a huge screen behind speakers to display hashtagged tweets in real time. But again, this “backchannel” can backfire if the tweets become negative or go off-topic. All that interaction can derail speakers as they try to respond in real-time to all the “interference.”
6. Include Non-Attendees
Don’t forget to set up a livestream during the event using Facebook or UStream so fans can follow along online. Facebook enables you to store this stream so that people can watch it after the event proper. You can also create a YouTube channel for the event to post videos before, during, and after. Encourage non-attendees to ask questions through Twitter or Facebook during the event and answer them live.
7. Post-Mortem: Extend the Shelf Life of Your Event
Your event doesn’t have to end the day it’s over. Social media can keep the momentum going for many weeks and months afterwards. On your blog, post a “wrap up” of all the key highlights. You can add links to presentations, key learnings, and other downloadable documents. Of course, you’ll want to post photos on the blog and on Facebook, and continue tweeting about the event even after it’s over. You can post thoughts, ideas, or links to longer articles that might be of interest to those who attended.
Another great way to keep your event from fading fast from people’s memories is to create ways for attendees and other interested parties to continue socializing, discussing, or debating topics covered there. Do whatever you can to keep the conversation alive.
8. Use Social Media Metrics to Measure Success
Consider using online surveys to ask attendees for feedback on panels, venue, speakers, topics, and other facets of the event. Facebook polls are fun, easy ways to get quick responses and feedback from attendees. Be prepared for honesty. If someone has a negative comment to share, make sure to address their comment or concern and store the information to improve next year’s event. Lastly, pull total social media stats from sites like Search.Twitter.com and Social Mention, or set up Google Alerts ahead of time. If the results are positive, don’t be shy about publicizing some of these metrics to highlight the reach and impact your event had.
Interested in more Social Media resources? Check out Mashable Explore, a new way to discover information on your favorite Mashable topics.
We’ve seen Facebook ads for individuals before, but this guy’s campaign is more personal — and potentially more profitable — than anything we’ve come across in the past.
Meet Matt Simpson of Tempe, Arizona. He’s a web-savvy 30-something, and he’s using Facebook’s self-service ad platform to find a long-term romantic partner.
In the recent past, Mashable staffers have been the target of a few campaigns from people who want to get our attention, either for news coverage or for a job. Facebook’s hyper-specific data on users makes it possible for those ad-buying individuals to narrow their campaigns to reach only a select few targets — the people most likely to respond to the ad.
Simpson has taken advantage of those capabilities in a new way. Since he knows what he wants — an emotionally balanced, intellectually and spiritually mature woman — he was able to set his campaign parameters to include women with an expressed interest in yoga, meditation and books by spiritual authors.
On his blog, Simpson notes that on most dating sites, women are bombarded with requests and messages. Too often, those pings are based on shallow, physical criteria. By creating a subtle way to reach out to women who share his deeper interests — and by allowing them to “opt in” to learning more about him rather than seeing his name in a deluge of suitor-sent missives — he might be increasing his odds of finding love online.
And at a cost of $0.75 per click, he might end up saving money rather than using a dating site or trying his luck in the real world of bars and coffee shops. So far, he’s spent less than $20 for his campaign, where women indicate they’d like to get to know him better; for contrast, a Match.com membership, where women are more on the defensive, would have cost him around $35 per month.
Simpson says he’s had no dates yet, but he was contacted by six women in the first week of the campaign.
“For tech-savvy folks like us,” he wrote in an email, “the gut reaction toward ‘creepy’ is not as strong. However, the public at large seems to have a difference reaction — either because it’s invasive or because it seems desperate.
“I think it’s a promotion-versus-attraction issue. The proliferation of dating sites has helped America accept attraction-based online dating. Promotion-based online dating is new. There’s got to be a reason that the big dating sites don’t offer added profile exposure for purchase.”
What do you think of the campaign? Weird, creepy, interesting — or perhaps even something you’d try yourself?
Hank Nothhaft is the co-founder and chief product officer of 
Interested in more Social Media resources? Check out 
