The art of reciprocation and my ultimate “Like” FAIL’age

Do you remember sending and receiving Christmas, Valentine’s, or Easter cards in elementary school?

I remember it clearly. Every holiday I gave each and every single kid in the class a card (well it was mandated but it’s the thought that counts, right?) But I always gave special ones to my best friends and they would return the favor. Granted, special card giving and receiving discussions were always held amongst my friends to make sure we were on the same page. There was no way I was giving a special card to someone blind sighted.

Anyway, I’ve kept all the cards I received throughout the years in two separate boxes. One for the ‘special ones’ and another for the mandated cards and randomly look through them. Depending on my day and mood, I can choose if I want to see the special one of a kind cards, or the cards the entire class received. Both have same sentimental values, but different sentimental meanings. And that’s how I differentiate FriendFeed’s “like” and “comment” features. Lost? Well let me try and explain.

Since my number one FriendFeed utilization resource Louis Gray’s super useful FriendFeed posts doesn’t have the “like” or commenting features detailed yet (damnit!!), I’m going to give a quick rundown.

For every post imported into FriendFeed feeds (how redundant!), there’re three user participation levels.

Comment-ing, Liking, and well.. just lurking.

The more a post is “liked” or “commented”, the more exposure it gets, since the post stays on the “new post” page. If the post gains enough “likes” or “comments”, the post is featured on the “best of” page, which is accessible from the main page, on the upper right hand corner.

Just in case, that’s what it looks like up there.

From there, users can sift through 30 of the most commented, active posts via day, week, or month and maybe catch something cool or informative you may have missed.

Now here’s where my personal ultimate FAIL’age comes in.

my stats

I comment FAR more than “like”, when the reason so many people have ‘found’ me, so to speak, is because the people I interacted with early on in FriendFeed were kind enough to “like” my posts, but obviously I’m not doing the same. Where is the reciprocation, Mona?

The best way I can articulate how I comment and ‘like’, is the card giving and receiving from elementary school. Just like how I keep all the cards I’ve ever received in two separate boxes -one for the cookie cutter mandate cards, the other for special cards, I separate the comment and “like” archives. I only “like” things I can purchase, reference, makes me (literally) LOL, or somehow utilize down the road, and comment on things that I like. There are times when I REALLY like something but hesitate to hit the “like” button since.. well… say for example six months from now, how in the world am I going to find that one post I liked when I have thousands of posts in my “like” archive? AND since I can look through my archived comments, I can always go back and look through things I liked enough to comment on.

I bring this up only because I noticed several people who would inevitably ‘like’ my post, suddenly well.. stopped. The past week, I tried my own little experiment, where I would obligatory “like” a post of theirs, and they in turn, would “like” one of mine.. but only one. If I “liked” two of their posts, they would reciprocate with “liking” two of mine. Weird, maybe it was a coincidence. So I kept trying with other people and they would do the same things. If I “liked” one post, they would “like” one of mine. If I “liked” two, they would “like” two, and etc., etc. That got me thinking and I drew the conclusion I may have inadvertently offended people by not reciprocating.

Today, I decided to let go of this pack rat mentality per se, since really.. do I reallly need these “likes” for future reference? I mean hello, that’s what Google is for, right?

So to my FriendFeed friends: If I offended any of you by not “liking” your items, I apologize. It’s not that your posts aren’t interesting enough to like, I just had a different way of utilizing those tools : )

That’s me, what makes you click the ‘like’ button?