Will Facebook survive without likes?
The thumbs up icon has become synonymous with Facebook since its addition to the site. The fact that such a simple, everyday word soon became almost exclusively Facebook related was really quite the phenomenon: “let people know that you enjoy [something] without leaving a comment.” Reactions arrived in 2016, with the ability to specify your feelings towards a post with Love, Haha, Wow, Sad or Angry. For a platform that began as a Harvard University digital yearbook without likes, there have been 1.13 trillion since 2004.
Aren’t likes the essence of Facebook? Now that Facebook owns Instagram and has trialled the removal of likes on that platform, we were warned of the take down of reactions on Facebook as of September 27th. Retrospectively, it may have been a sneaky move by Facebook to not fail the app in favour of Instagram. As of July 2019, Facebook still has a billion more users than Instagram.
We addressed the potential impact for influencers, brands and agencies regarding Instagram getting rid of likes back in July, and analysed any changes that occurred on our end after a couple of months. As of the end of September, the likes being taken off Facebook has not updated for any of us in the Hotglue office.
Early chatter about no likes on FB is pretty nonchalant. Perhaps most people are over the subject given the furore that occurred back in July with Instagram. Comments on the topic call Facebook likes “not relevant to the platform [anymore]”, with others just wanting Facebook not to have ulterior motives and keep the count available for a select few. Or is this user’s concern regarding brands and agencies having access to this data?
Facebook’s sole revenue is from advertising, and with the platform’s usage rates declining in the last few years, the conglomerate must be fearing a dip in income. Writers on the topic have described the platform’s users as only posting to reveal noteworthy events such as graduations, weddings and births of children. (The irony here being that this was the initial purpose of Facebook.) Less posts = less activity = less ads seen. Tech journalists suspect that the removal of likes on Facebook will be done “gradually and [pulled] back if it significantly hurts usage or ad revenue.”
In this new change, personal profiles as well as business ones will be able to see their own engagement metrics only, just like with the Instagram change back in July. The doubt continues regarding user engagement once the update goes live. How reactive will Facebook users be? Psychologically, behaviour change may occur when the new look is fresh in everyone’s mind but will likely die off later in the week/month as it becomes natural not to see the like count. Haven’t we already adjusted to this on Instagram anyway?
While the reaction has been seemingly dulled by the fact that this is not new to us, we speculate how this may impact third parties related to Facebook. The change, just like for Instagram, has not occurred on desktop for the trials. Until the update goes global, we can still log in on a computer to suss out like counts. For a lot of people, Facebook has always been favourable on the desktop version. Before everyone got iPhones, it was probably how more people accessed it.
Talking about the global effect, the USA has yet to be guinea pigged for the removal of likes, so we would expect the “issue” to arise again when that does occur. There are roughly 30 million bloggers in America and a decent percentage would monetise their content on social media. It’s likely that the USA will be the final major test subject for the change, if not just copping it when the change goes worldwide. Which it will!
SIDE NOTE:
For anyone interested, here is the first ever article published about The Facebook as it was then called!
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2004/2/9/hundreds-register-for-new-facebook-website/