Hot Chai + Facebook Thoughts

I was enjoying a cup of hot chai this morning with Frederick, Maryland sidekicks @bethschillaci and @jesshibb @  Moxie Bakery. Somewhere in the convo (which I’ll blog about soon), Beth mentioned she had tweeted info earlier about  Facebook’s decision to transition from “become a fan” to “like.”

My curiosity was peaked … why would Facebook be doing this?

Many thoughts came to mind.

I called our team member @deannie from the road and she was equally intrigued (yes, we’re total Facebook nerds, can you tell?). In an email @deannie sent me while I was out on appointments, she says:

“It would be far more useful to me if I could see the comments of other “fans” or “likers” on Fan Pages, engage with the community that the creator clearly is building. Why can’t the ads on the side show when my friends make comments on Fan pages? Then everyone wins: you get the clicks, you get the community building touchy feely stuff and folks want to stay where? ON FACEBOOK.”

Hmmm … just interesting.

Next I bumped into Joe Marchese’s column, Online Spin, which really gave more great Facebook food for thought. Joe writes:

“Facebook is betting that, based on their data, people are more likely to click the “like” button vs. the “fan” button. This will allow brands to form more connections to consumers through the Facebook platform, and allow Facebook to become an even more integral part of brand-consumer communication.”

Those were similar to the thoughts I was having on my way up to Hanover, Maryland for a client meeting (more on this coming up, too). I was thinking that this move by Facebook is actually very calculated for the very reasons Joe shares: more people are apt to like something than they are to love it; the love fan base … as in life … is rather limited compared to things you like. It’s the same concept in love, too, right? You are more apt to like a lot of folks but usually only fall in love with a handful of people in your lifetime.

Denis Hancock of nGenera Insight commented on Joe’s post and refers to this move by Facebook as “lowering the bar.” Specifically, Denis says: “By semantically “lowering the bar” to “like” instead of “fan”, it seems reasonable to assume more people will connect with more brands. What makes this interesting is that, in the “traditional” marketing world, a customer had to LOVE you in order to “evangelize” for you in any way – time, effort, etc. The ability to easily leverage connections with people that only “like” you – both directly, and by having these linkages visible to other people in their networks – could prove to be a very big deal.”

No matter how you slice it, these are interesting Facebook times. If you have thoughts about the this very curious shift from fanning to liking … I’d love to hear ‘em …