The Birth of the Facebook Like Button

The next time you click the like button on Facebook, you might remember the story that almost never appeared on the world's largest social network.

The Like button is perhaps one of Facebook’s simplest features, but it is actually one of its most important. Today, the Facebook Like button has evolved into many different variations, collectively known as Reactions. However, what you may not know is that the idea of ​​a thumbs-up button on the world’s largest social network took two years to conceive.

Andrew Bosworth, Facebook’s VP of Ads and Pages, told Quora that the idea of ​​a star, plus, or thumbs-up button first came up in July 2007, three years after “TheFacebook” officially launched in 2004. The initial proposal for the Facebook approval button was to be called the “awesome button.” A few months later, someone suggested the name “like” instead, but Bosworth said the idea didn’t get much traction.

The Like button and its variations.

At the time, the team behind the News Feed features was excited that a thumbs-up button could help them rank posts based on popularity. The advertising team, meanwhile, thought that such interactive buttons could increase click-through rates on ads. But in November 2007, when the idea of ​​a thumbs-up button was presented to Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder was less enthusiastic.

He worried that the new feature might overshadow the sharing or commenting features. Users might just click a button instead of re-sharing or writing something. After this meeting, Bosworth said, “development basically stopped.”

It wasn’t until December 2008 that Jonathan Piles, Jaren Morgenstern, and Soleio continued to work on the Like button idea despite much skepticism about Mark Zuckerberg’s approval. Some even called it a “cursed project.” However, a secret weapon was provided by data scientist Itamer Rosenn, who claimed that a Like button would not reduce the number of comments on a post.

Mark Zuckerberg almost rejected the appearance of a “like” feature on the social network he created.

In fact, it may even increase the number of comments because the Like button boosts the popularity of the post in the News Feed, helping it reach more people. Mark’s concern suddenly became… unfounded.

A bigger problem is that FriendFeed, a social aggregator that shut down in May 2015, had introduced a “like” feature in October 2007. Finally, on February 9, 2009, “likes” on Facebook were officially launched.

The next time you click the like button on Facebook, you might remember the story that almost never appeared on the world's largest social network.

According to Saostar