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Tag: Facebook Likes

  • Facebook Changes Up The ‘Like’ And ‘Share’ Buttons

    Facebook is giving the Like and Share buttons a makeover, essentially making them bluer.

    Here’s what the buttons will soon look like on sites around the web:

    As pictured above, Facebook is also now giving webmasters the option to use the Like and Share buttons together.

    While the change to the buttons may not be huge, the impact these buttons have on the web certainly is. Facebook says that combined, these buttons are viewed over 22 billion times daily across more than 7.5 million sites.

    And Facebook says it’s seeing a “favorable increase” in likes and shares with the new design.

    The new buttons will be rolling out over the coming weeks. Webmasters won’t have to do anything special, as they’ll be updated automatically.

    Images: Facebook

  • Facebook Likes Found By Federal Court To Be Protected As Free Speech

    Remember that case where the guy got fired for liking the “wrong” political candidate on Facebook? Well, good news for people who think a Facebook like should be considered an act of free speech. Today, a federal court ruled that Facebook likes are protected by the first amendment.

    Last year, a Virginia judge ruled the opposite in a case where Deputy Sheriff Daniel Ray Carter of Hampton, Virginia “liked” the page of “Jim Adams for Hampton Sheriff.” Carter’s boss, Sheriff B.J. Roberts, saw this, and then when Roberts won the election against Adams, Carter was fired. Carter claimed it was the Facebook “like” that led to his termination. He sued, but the judge determined that a “like” is not protected free speech.

    Carter appealed the decision, and got Facebook on board to help argue that a like is free speech just like a political bumper sticker is.

    The ruling has now been overturned. Here’s the whole 81-page decision (via The Wall Street Journal):

    Facebook 4 Th Circuit

    What is basically comes down to is that pressing the like button to show that you like something on Facebook is no different than if you had actually typed the words “I like this.” You know, basic speech as it would be conveyed through a computer or other device.

    Image: Facebook

  • Likester Launches New Social Platform for Analyzing Facebook Likes

    A couple of months ago, the Internet was blowing up about the hit show American Idol. This hype increased as global popularity engine Likester made predictions for the show through its Likester Idol technology. Likester was able to forecast who would be going home each week based on the number of Facebook Likes the contestants received both before and after their weekly performances.

    The service proved to be accurate and turned into almost a spoiler service for the show. Because it became quite popular, Likester founder and president Kevin McCarthy began thinking about what else he could do with the technology. In the end, he came up with a social media platform called Likester Lists that allows users to track Facebook Likes based on a particular topic on a daily basis for free.

    “Likester Lists is a platform that allows you to track the daily Likes that anything in the Facebook universe is receiving,” he said.

    In a nutshell, the platform is an ongoing poll that calculates new data daily. There are other services that provide a similar service, but many of these charge for their data. Anyone can create a List, and once you do, Likester creates a dashboard that organizes all your Lists with images, links, and more.

    For example, one List that already exists is “Who’s Winning the Shoe Wars?” Although some people might speculate that Nike receives the most Likes, it does not. It does bring in a few thousand Likes each day, but Converse brings in 20,000 Likes on average daily.

    “What’s popular on a Net basis in the Facebook universe is not necessarily what’s popular on an ongoing basis,” said McCarthy.

    Because Facebook’s Like data has grown to be tremendously valuable, McCarthy believes that Likester Lists will be beneficial to both general “for fun” users as well as professional users. He also sees the platform being extremely useful in the upcoming election season.

    “In 6 months, I would bet that the political world is going to realize what Likester is onto here,” he said.

    Likester has plans to create animated heatmaps that show the likes for each candidate in blue and red. This service is likely to really influence the election season because, as McCarthy pointed out, polls have a lot of flaws in them, but a Like analysis is purely data driven.

    Could you see Likester shaking up the political scene during the upcoming elections? Let us know.

  • American Idol Predictions from Likester

    American Idol Predictions from Likester

    Did you watch American Idol last night? If not, here’s my amateur recap: James rocked the house, as usual; Scotty had the girls swooning, again, as usual; Lauren won the judges over with both her song selections; and Haley, although criticized for her first song choice by Jennifer Lopez and Randy Jackson, came back and showed her determination to win in her second performance.

    Who do you think should win American Idol? Tell us your vote in the comments.

    Although many of us have likely made predictions about whom we think should go home each Thursday night, a new startup prides itself in making Idol predictions based on actual data. The new service is called Likester, and the data is based on Facebook “likes.”

    Likester Idol goes through Facebook and analyzes the “like” data of each contestant both before and after the Wednesday night show. From this, they are able to determine how many new fans, or “likes,” the contestants have gained based on their performances. On Thursday around noon PST, Likester makes their predictions.

    Last week, they predicted that Jacob Lusk would be sent home, which proved to be correct. Will they be right again tonight? Check back here for frequent updates.

    It’s an interesting concept, isn’t it? Not only is Likester fun for entertainment purposes such as Likester Idol, but it is also useful in other areas. Likester serves as a search database for Facebook “likes.” In addition, it categorizes the “like” data in several ways to show users all the Facebook pages that they have liked in the past, the pages that their friends like, the pages that are currently trending, and the pages that are  “liked” the most in any given area.

    Likester is also experimenting with affinity and anti affinity data. This data would make recommendations to users based user trends. For example, if you “like” Pepsi, Likester would suggest a list of items to you that others that “like” Pepsi also “like.” The anti affinity aspect would show items that users didn’t “like.”

    “Our goal is to help users understand the things that they’re already liking and, potentially, things that they could like,” said Kevin McCarthy, the Founder and President of Likester.

    Likester’s database grew to 2.5 million items in just a week’s time, which means that it is collecting a lot of rich data. McCarthy told us that brands are also finding the data very useful for their local marketing efforts.

    “I think we’ve done a really good job of putting the data out there. Our challenge is going to be about surfacing the good stuff for the users, so that they don’t have to do all this searching,” he said.

    Aside from the business and entertainment uses, we can also see Likester playing an important role in the upcoming elections in 2012.

    How much of an impact do you think Facebook “likes” will play in the elections next year?

    Update: According to this week’s Facebook “like” data, Likester predicts that Lauren Alaina will be going home tonight. Will this prediction come true? We’ll find out tonight…

    Update 2: It appears that the Facebook “like” data wasn’t as telling this week – Likester predicted Lauren to be the one going home and, ironically, James Durbin, who has 129,137 “likes” on Facebook, was the one America voted off the show. Does this mean that the “like” metric isn’t as influential as we originally thought?