PR Case Study: The Facebook Like Button

Facebook intro­duced the Like but­ton in 2009.

The impact of the Like but­ton has been sig­ni­fic­ant cul­tur­ally, ana­lyt­ic­ally, struc­tur­ally, eco­nom­ic­ally etc. ¹Facebook Like but­ton. (2023, February 3). In Wikipedia. https://​en​.wiki​pe​dia​.org/​w​i​k​i​/​F​a​c​e​b​o​o​k​_​l​i​k​e​_​b​u​t​ton

It’s one of the most influ­en­tial PR cam­paigns of all time.

Here we go:

Background: A New Feature for Interaction

Today, it seems obvi­ous that you can inter­act with almost any social object by simply lik­ing it. But this was­n’t always the case.

Activity: Tapping the Engagement Pyramid

By imple­ment­ing the Facebook Like but­ton, the social net­work could tap into much lar­ger parts of the Engagement Pyramid as it allowed users to inter­act eas­ily besides shar­ing and commenting.

Adding new means of basing decisions on social proof often leads to increased social engagement.

Likes from users also sent high-value social sig­nals via noti­fic­a­tions to con­tent pub­lish­ers, thus con­form­ing them to adapt their out­put as a form of dir­ect audi­ence feed­back, increas­ing engage­ment on both sides.

Result: Multi-Level Data Opt-In

The Like but­ton did­n’t just affect indi­vidu­al online beha­viours. It also provided Facebook with a wealth of new data to fur­ther optim­ise the algorithm and fine-tune the user exper­i­ence — and later also provide addi­tion­al data to fine-tune their pro­gram­mat­ic ad model.

Most sig­ni­fic­antly, but often over­looked his­tor­ic­ally, is that Facebook also provided the Like but­ton as a social plu­gin, allow­ing web­site own­ers to add Facebook Like func­tion­al­ity to their platforms.

Facebook quickly gained data-track­ing access to almost the entire inter­net — and web­site own­ers did all the work for them and provided their data for free in exchange for get­ting their con­tent more eas­ily shared on the social net­work site.

Insight: Change the Internal Polarity

When we think of fea­tures and func­tions as PR pro­fes­sion­als, we have a tend­ency to think of them as stan­dalone com­mu­nic­a­tion activ­it­ies. “We’re now launch­ing a new fea­ture or function.”

However, the real story is often to be found with­in new infra­struc­tures. It’s often the infra­struc­ture that provides impact. By think­ing of fea­tures and func­tions dif­fer­ently, we can begin ask­ing dif­fer­ent types of questions:

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PR Resource: Why We Share on Social Media

The Narcissistic Principle

“People want to be loved; fail­ing that admired; fail­ing that feared; fail­ing that hated and des­pised. They want to evoke some sort of sen­ti­ment. The soul shud­ders before obli­vi­on and seeks con­nec­tion at any price.”
— Hjalmar Söderberg (1869−1941), Swedish author

When we share on social media, we share for a reas­on. And that reas­on typ­ic­ally has some­thing to do with… ourselves:

It’s the nar­ciss­ist­ic prin­ciple behind why we share on social media.

The nar­ciss­ist­ic prin­ciple = when we share or engage on social media, we mainly share aspects of ourselves — because that’s what we care about most. ²Silfwer, J. (2012, July 16). The Narcissistic Principle. Doctor Spin | The PR Blog. https://​doc​tor​spin​.net/​n​a​r​c​i​s​s​i​s​t​i​c​-​p​r​i​n​c​i​p​le/

If you can get social media to work for you, great.
Make the most of it. 

However, we should all be mind­ful not to let the “online pres­sure cook­er” get the bet­ter of us.

“A status update with no likes (or a clev­er tweet without retweets) becomes the equi­val­ent of a joke met with silence. It must be rethought and rewrit­ten. And so we don’t show our true selves online, but a mask designed to con­form to the opin­ions of those around us.”
— Neil Strauss, Wall Street Journal

Learn more: The Narcissistic Principle