Recently, Facebook released a feature in its newsfeed that allows people to "like" newsfeed items. As it's described by Facebook's program manager Leah Pearlman, the feature allows you to tell your friends you approve of what they posted:
This is similar to how you might rate a restaurant on a reviews site. If you go to the restaurant and have a great time, you may want to rate it 5 stars. But if you had a particularly delicious dish there and want to rave about it, you can write a review detailing what you liked about the restaurant. We think of the new "Like" feature to be the stars, and the comments to be the review.
This feature prima face copies FriendFeed's "like" functionality, right down to the interaction and the verbage. Not surprisingly, FriendFeed's supporters were outraged and appalled at Facebook's Machievellian drive to copy FriendFeed. But I think it's important to take a step back and talk about the value of a "like".
