There’s no Dislike button, it’s tricky to block people and there’s no option to Reject event invites (you can only Ignore them). It’s all terribly inoffensive.
And that’s a key reason for Facebook’s incredible success.
The internet can be a horrible place. People shoot off unfair blog posts, thumb down your comments on YouTube and have you ever read the article comments on the Daily Mail website. Or even worse, the Guardian!?!
Facebook offers a Disnified version of the internet for people. Everything is OK and you won’t get bruised. It’s like going back to the playground, but this time there are no bullies. Everyone has to wear a name tag and play nice.
We’re all vulnerable and we all have egos. Zuckerberg is either a genius or he’s stumbled on a genius idea.
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September 17th, 2010
carl
…but they need to avoid news feed pollution. It was already pretty grating seeing too many Foursquare check-ins. Now that’s going to step up another order of magnitude.
Surely the most talkable Google Doodle for a while? A fully playable pacman, even with “Insert coin” button for two player mode!
I wrote last year about how staying likeable would help lessen worries about Google’s size and influence. After a year of fairly flat launches (Wave, Buzz), it’s good to see they’ve got their playfulness back (and some cool products too).
Meanwhile, facebook is the new 200lb gorilla that could do with a refresher in the importance of likeability. The current concerns about privacy seems to be getting real traction.
When it’s easy even for non-techies like me to add social plug-ins to websites, we better get ready for an explosion of ‘Like’ buttons, activity streams and friend recommendations all over the web.
Google must be thinking very hard tonight.
