A week ago I was in San Francisco for F8 and I’m glad I was.
Several months earlier I wrote about the impending “Facebook gold rush” and I believe it’s beginning to materialize. Facebook is a true force and I don’t think people realize the magnitude of what they have been accomplishing.
The move to create a universal Like button is fascinating because it highlights a key distinction between the Facebook and Google strategies: the Hyperlink vs. the Like.
My guess is that when Facebook borrowed the Like concept from Friendfeed they never expected the volume of Liking that materialized.
Likes are a lower friction version of link sharing. As websites begin to implement Likes (50,000 have already), Facebook begins to challenge Google on many levels. The foundation of Google Search is page rank, and thus hyperlinks. By pushing web visitors away from sharing links in favor of clicking “Like”, Facebook begins to challenge Google in a way that may not be immediately obvious, but is most definitely ambitious and possibly game changing.
