The problem with FB ‘likes’ is that their meaning is obscure
They can mean:
I like what you said/posted.
I like that you said/posted it.
I agree with what you said/posted.
I am acknowledging what you said/posted.
I am acknowledging that you said/posted it.
I am acknowledging that you exist.
I don’t want to get involved.
It was an accident.
I like you.
Hello.
Remember me?
The problem with every other so-called ‘social networking’ site is that they copied the idea without improving upon it in any way … just giving it another name.
Medium’s hearts suffered from the same problem.
In fact they were worse.
I might have wanted to say any of the above to someone, but couldn’t do so without actually recommending it to others — which might not have been something I espcially wanted to do.
So, claps are, to my mind at least, an improvement over the hearts if only one mechanism is to be used.
But, I’m not sure how much more so they are.
They still act like a recommend on my own profile — people still see all of them regardless of whether I especially wanted my interaction with the author and the particular work to be noticed by anyone else.
The finer granularity is something, I guess … but without an accepted norm, what does it even mean?
Does one clap, three claps, represent a slow handclap/golf clap?
Or is it just that someone doesn’t use the granularity and is just ‘like’-ing like they do on Facebook … or ‘recommend’-ing like they used to on Medium?
Some mechanism to recommend posts with, that were separate from the claps, would be good—but Medium just appears to be rearanging the deckchairs on the Titanic right now.
