Have you recently posted a picture on Instagram and were you hoping for lots of likes? Or are you disappointed with the amount of likes you received on your latest Facebook post? This might change soon.. If you are an influencer, you might have to find a new job 😉
Facebook and Instagram have both started a trial: hiding likes. The famous like button remains visible for every user, but only the post’s author can see the number of likes. Users will be able to see who liked the post but not how many likes the post received in total. Instagram already started testing in Australia a few months ago, Facebook has started its trial on September 27th. Depending on the test results, they might implement this update throughout every country in the world.
Their main goal is to make people feel comfortable in expressing themselves. They want a focus on the quality of what people share and how this connects them, rather than focusing on the number of likes they receive.
Studies have shown a decline in the well-being of social media users. Users experience a boring life compared to the well-liked glamorous shared moments of their peers and other influencers active on social media. Due to the continuous exposure to these positive messages and pictures about others, users elicit envy, which is an emotion linked to the lower well-being. Furthermore, studies state that social media harms the self-esteem of children and teenagers. Removing the visibility of the number of likes for others might positively impact the well-being of users. The status symbol of social media likes will likely disappear, more likes on social media will not automatically mean you are popular, engaging or worthwhile anymore.
Concerning the great importance of social media nowadays, I think Facebook and Instagram are good on track in changing the status quo and improving the current way of interacting with each other on social media platforms.
This raises the following question: Do you want to be in a life-long popularity contest?
Reference list:
Conger, K. (2019, 27 september). Facebook Tests Hiding âLikesâ on Social Media Posts. Geraadpleegd op 29 september 2019, van https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/26/technology/facebook-hidden-likes.html
Constine, J. (2019, 26 september). Facebook tries hiding Like counts to fight envy. Geraadpleegd op 29 september 2019, van https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/26/facebook-hides-likes/
Constine, J. (2017, 15 december). The difference between good and bad Facebooking. Geraadpleegd op 29 september 2019, van https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/14/active-vs-passive-social-media/
Instagram hides number of “likes” from users in Australian trial. (2019, 18 juli). Geraadpleegd op 29 september 2019, van https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jul/18/instagram-hides-number-of-likes-from-users-in-australian-trial
I think “hiding likes” is an interesting experiment. This is an interesting article about why people are so obsessed with likes on Instagram and Facebook: https://graziadaily.co.uk/life/opinion/care-likes-social-media/.
So, in this trail only the post’s author can see the number of likes. Users will be able to see who liked the post but not how many likes the post received in total. This challenges the business-model of influencers: the more likes, the more money they earn. However, I think this trail could help companies to focus more on the quality of the post, than on the number of people who, perhaps even unconscious, press the like button. To measure the results of the influencer-marketing of a company, the number of likes would still be very useful. Nevertheless, the influencers still have the possibility to see the number of likes on their posts. This requires close cooperation between companies and influencers, in order to ensure an optimal analysis of the results.
Hi Romee, interesting blog you wrote about changing the status quo and improving the current way of interacting with each other on social media by hiding one’s likes! However, for marketeers the amount of followers and likes are the most important factors to decide upon paying someone to be an influencer for the marketeers’ brand. By hiding likes, only the amount of followers would remain transparant. Followers are, however, buyable. How would this affect marketeers who seek influencers for their brands? Or do you see social media users sharing their likes with marketeers?