Lowcountry Geek

I wonder how most judge the emotional commitment that comes with 'liking' something.

How much do you have to like something before you proclaim your adoration for it? 

It brings back the old note in elementary school: "Do you like me, or do you like me like me?"

That note only was second to "Do you like me? Circle yes or no." But I digress.

So again, I'm talking about Facebook.

The social media giant this week changed its "Become a Fan" function to "Like."

So now you're not a fan of a page, but you like it. So now what should we call fan pages? Like pages? Obviously Facebook thought that out about as much as Jobs thought out the naming of the IPad, but again I digress.

So back to the like pages. Why the change?

Here's Facebook's explanation:

Why did "Become a Fan" change to "Like"?

To improve your experience and promote consistency across the site, we've changed the language for Pages from "Fan" to "Like." We believe this change offers you a more light-weight and standard way to connect with people, things and topics in which you are interested.

Let's unpack this for a minute. They say it "offers you a more light-weight ... way to connect with people, things and topics." What does that mean? Were people feeling overburdened by the 'fan' function? Are they more likely to like a hotel than become a fan of it? Does it really matter? Sounds like the tech geeks failed to understand the masses in this case.

The Facebook explanation also mentions 'consistency.' Basically you can like a status or a photo and you can like a page or brand. But if you like that someone has liked something then you automatically become a liker, which I'm not sure everyone will like. Consistent? Maybe! Confusing? I think so.

Finally, what do we call people who like pages? Previously they were fans. Are they now likers? Do I say my fan page as 2,000 likers? As a few of us (@bfgcom) postured on Twitter yesterday, that seems dangerously close to ligers, which might be weird. But who wouldn't want 2,000 ligers?  

So in summary, do I LIKE this Facebook change?

I honestly don't care. As @amybrock mentioned on Twitter yesterday, it sucks for people who have collateral already printed based on "find us on Facebook and become a Fan." Otherwise it probably doesn't matter. 

Still, I think I'll put my stake in the ground as a #disliker.