Facebook's "recommend" over like

[Elias Bizannes]

Looks like Facebooks web-wide rollout will not be a like button as reported, but a "recommend": http://www.flickr.com/photos/liako/4540922949/. I could be wrong as this may be a CNN specific implementation, or maybe even an A/B test on different audiences.

Either way, it's an interesting twist on this problem with the 'like' action.

Elias Bizannes
http://eliasbizannes.com

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Activity Streams" group.
To post to this group, send email to activity...@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to activity-strea...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/activity-streams?hl=en.

[Jonathan Coffman]

When deploying a Like button, you can actually select from either "Like" or "Recommend" -- I suppose the main reason to use "recommend" would be if you're also using the Recommendations widget which also just launched, that way the action matches the end-result.

[Chris Messina]

It would seem as though Like and Recommend are interchangeable. The semantics are slightly different, but in practice that seems accurate. 

Sent from my iPhone 2G

[Bill de hOra]

> The
> semantics are slightly different,

If we're talking semantics, they're quite different. Like is an
expressive. Recommend is a directive.

> but in practice that seems accurate.

It's hard to say you're wrong (in practice people don't care much for
semantics until they get confused).

That said, the Ux for recommended for you would be very different to
liked by your friends.

Bill

Chris Messina wrote:
> It would seem as though Like and Recommend are interchangeable. The
> semantics are slightly different, but in practice that seems accurate.
>
> Sent from my iPhone 2G
>
> On Apr 21, 2010, at 12:34 PM, Jonathan Coffman

> <jonathan...@gmail.com <mailto:jonathan...@gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>> When deploying a Like button, you can actually select from either
>> "Like" or "Recommend" -- I suppose the main reason to use "recommend"
>> would be if you're also using the Recommendations widget which also
>> just launched, that way the action matches the end-result.
>>
>>
>> On Apr 21, 2010, at 3:31 PM, Elias Bizannes wrote:
>>
>>> Looks like Facebooks web-wide rollout will not be a like button as
>>> reported, but a "recommend":

>>> <http://www.flickr.com/photos/liako/4540922949/>http://www.flickr.com/photos/liako/4540922949/.

>>> I could be wrong as this may be a CNN specific implementation, or
>>> maybe even an A/B test on different audiences.
>>>
>>> Either way, it's an interesting twist on this problem with the 'like'
>>> action.
>>>
>>> Elias Bizannes

>>> <http://eliasbizannes.com>http://eliasbizannes.com

>>>
>>> --
>>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
>>> Groups "Activity Streams" group.
>>> To post to this group, send email to

>>> <mailto:activity...@googlegroups.com>activity...@googlegroups.com
>>> <mailto:activity...@googlegroups.com>.

>>> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to

>>> <mailto:activity-strea...@googlegroups.com>activity-strea...@googlegroups.com
>>> <mailto:activity-strea...@googlegroups.com>.

>>> For more options, visit this group at

>>> <http://groups.google.com/group/activity-streams?hl=en>http://groups.google.com/group/activity-streams?hl=en.

>>
>> --
>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
>> Groups "Activity Streams" group.
>> To post to this group, send email to activity...@googlegroups.com

>> <mailto:activity...@googlegroups.com>.

>> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
>> activity-strea...@googlegroups.com

>> <mailto:activity-strea...@googlegroups.com>.

[Adina Levin]

Reading through the list and the wiki and haven't found a clear
answer... is "like" represented in activitystreams as a general
property, or only a property of "review" items. (it should be general,
and it would be great to have a standards-based implementation)

[Chris Messina]

I don't think we've added it to the core schema, but I did start a research page:

http://wiki.activitystrea.ms/Like

I'd be in support of adding it to the core schema.

Chris

--
Chris Messina
Open Web Advocate, Google

Personal: http://factoryjoe.com
Follow me on Buzz: http://buzz.google.com/chrismessina
...or Twitter: http://twitter.com/chrismessina

This email is:   [ ] shareable    [X] ask first   [ ] private

[Christian Crumlish]

On Thu, Apr 22, 2010 at 7:53 AM, Chris Messina <chris....@gmail.com> wrote:

It would seem as though Like and Recommend are interchangeable. The semantics are slightly different, but in practice that seems accurate. 

Perhaps counterintuitively, the bar for recommending something traditionally has been higher (although that may have been only when you are recommending the thing to specific people), but the gist is that it's very easy to casually vote yes on things and say you like them, but the moment you recommend them to another person you feel more accountable for that other person's experience.

Which isn't to say it's not a semantic distinction but rather that semantics are very important! (duh, too obvious?)

     --xian

[Christian Crumlish]

ah i see this is an older part of the thread, well covered already. nevermind. carry on :D

[Dan Brickley]

On Sat, May 15, 2010 at 3:54 AM, Christian Crumlish <xi...@pobox.com> wrote:
>
> On Thu, Apr 22, 2010 at 7:53 AM, Chris Messina <chris....@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> It would seem as though Like and Recommend are interchangeable. The
>> semantics are slightly different, but in practice that seems accurate.
>>
>
> Perhaps counterintuitively, the bar for recommending something traditionally
> has been higher (although that may have been only when you are recommending
> the thing to specific people), but the gist is that it's very easy to
> casually vote yes on things and say you like them, but the moment you
> recommend them to another person you feel more accountable for that other
> person's experience.
> Which isn't to say it's not a semantic distinction but rather that semantics
> are very important! (duh, too obvious?)

I raised a similar point on the Open Graph Protocol, based on my
subjective experience: I have found that I am very unwilling to 'LIKE'
certain news stories, whereas I might 'RECOMMEND' them. Reason being
that the 'LIKE' verb in English permits a critical mis-interpretation:
that the liker likes the situation / state of affairs *described* by
the liked document.

discussion:
http://groups.google.com/group/open-graph-protocol/browse_thread/thread/5397bd1dad450484#

Example from the wild (excerpted):

"og:url http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/30/AR201...
og:title Belgian vote on Muslim veils could echo in Europe
og:type website At the bottom, the magic Facebook thing says "18
people like this. Be
the first of your friends."

If I'm on a movie or restaurant site, I might be liking or
recommending the real-world entity. On a news site, the real world
thing is basically phenomena eg. war, disease, political events, so
the cost of confusion (in terms of user embarrassment, potential
social impact) is perhaps a bit higher. In other fields, there's still
a need for clarity: a feed from my Amazon profile could have a list of
books/products I recommend, or book/product reviews that I recommend,
including good reviews of bad books.

So, two points then. Firstly, Likes and recommends are distinct. There
are circumstances when 'likes' seems more appropriate than recommends
(you feel positive towards it, but don't want to actively endorse it
for others). There are circumstances when 'recommends' seems more
appropriate; for me typically when I want to endorse a document and be
clear that I'm not endorsing the thing that it describes. Secondly,
data formats and protocols (activity streams, opengraphprototocol)
need to be very clear when they are ascribing user opinions to
documents and when to the things the user is describing. It might be
worth doing some user testing on this point to try to get an idea how
current site machinery is perceived...

cheers,

Dan

[Chris Messina]

On Sat, May 15, 2010 at 12:19 AM, Dan Brickley <dan...@danbri.org> wrote:

So, two points then. Firstly, Likes and recommends are distinct. There
are circumstances when 'likes' seems more appropriate than recommends
(you feel positive towards it, but don't want to actively endorse it
for others). There are circumstances when 'recommends' seems more
appropriate; for me typically when I want to endorse a document and be
clear that I'm not endorsing the thing that it describes.  Secondly,
data formats and protocols (activity streams, opengraphprototocol)
need to be very clear when they are ascribing user opinions to
documents and when to the things the user is describing. It might be
worth doing some user testing on this point to try to get an idea how
current site machinery is perceived...

At this point it's not really up to us to determine how sites implement or publish these verbs. We do of course need to define them in the spec to mean certain things — and to be treated a certain way — but we also need to be responsive to how these behaviors currently manifest in the wild, rather than how we'd like them to.

If the argument is for adding a "recommend" verb to the schema along with a "like" verb, then I'd be open to that discussion, presuming that the proper research is done on implementations in the wild and documented on the wiki. ;)

Chris

--
Chris Messina
Open Web Advocate, Google

Personal: http://factoryjoe.com
Follow me on Buzz: http://buzz.google.com/chrismessina
...or Twitter: http://twitter.com/chrismessina

This email is:   [ ] shareable    [X] ask first   [ ] private