Justin Cox Presents:

Stars, Hearts and a Thumbs Up: How I Learned How to Stop Using the Web and Start Liking It

I can remember the first time I was shown the Internet. It started as a harmless game of Sim City complete with a full destruction at the hands of some horrible combination of natural disasters, riots and robot attacks. After the town was completely left in ruins, the host pulled up America Online. We were welcomed upon signing on and played around with some awesome keywords and then, then it happened. He clicked on the button that read “WWW” and there we were, surfing the world wide web.

A few years later my family got our first computer connected to the Internet. But instead of AOL, we went with a local provider that took us straight to the web without having to jump through any third party’s hoops. I had complete access to the information of the world without the need for silly keywords and could pull up anything that a 56kbps modem would allow. I was living the high life.

With this new found freedom came the desire to claim my own piece of cyber real estate. This desire grew until a Geocities account was procured and HTML became a second language. At this point I became able to bend the Internet to my very whim and developed a sense that the Internet was created to be used in any way I saw fit. The Internet was mine for the taking and no one could tell me how I was to use it.

But as the Internet continued to develop a funny thing happened, it became social. I can’t put my finger on when exactly this pivotal moment occurred, but I do remember being a junior in college when a little website sprung up that was only accessible by people with college email addresses and even then only to a small group of schools across the country. That’s right, I was on Facebook before Facebook was cool.

Facebook was this new and wondrous place where I could connect with friends as close as the room next door and as far as the other side of the country. I could interact with them, share pictures and even poke them if I felt so inclined — though I still have no idea what the purpose of poking really is. It was like the opening of the wild west for the digital age.

As Facebook grew and expanded so did the social web. Comment boxes showed up on everyone’s blog and even some mainstream websites. Message boards become more active and, at times, heated. The web became something demanding interaction and I dove in head first. The Internet became, and still is, all about bringing people together.

But in this new social web something was lost, at least initially. The glory days of bending the Internet to my whim was lost to writing on friends walls and commenting on their blogs. I became stuck in this construct of using the Internet the way it was presented to me. It was ten years ago looking at AOLs gateway access and keywords all over again. I was being tied down and I didn’t even realize it. That was until I started using the star.

I first saw the star on Twitter some two years ago. It was this funny thing that sat next to every post waiting for me to click it. There was a list of “Favorites” that corresponded with the star but no instruction or explanation was given. The star could be anything I wanted it to be. I started staring posts that were funny, overly pointed, or that I agreed with spot on so that I could return to them whenever I desired. The star was the start of my social web awaking.

Before long I started using Google Reader to manage my extensive RSS collection and it too had a star feature. Instead of “Favorites,” Google collected the stars as “Stared Items” and again came with no explanation. So I used it in much the same way, collecting stuff I might want to read again or things that I didn’t have time to read while going through all the feeds. The star allowed me to break the construct of using the social web as it was provided. It gave me another option, one that was open ended and unique to me. My staring philosophy is probably different from yours but that’s ok, in fact, that’s what makes the star such a wonderful addition to the social web.

But it didn’t end with the star. I went through a brief period with Tumblr awhile back which allowed me to discover the heart. Like the star, Tumblr allowed marking posts that I found interesting or enjoyed or just wanted to save with a nice little heart. However Tumblr merged the open ended nature that I loved about the star with the closed construct that I didn’t like about the social web: it referred to the heart as “Likes” and also notified the poster that I “liked” their post. I was again being thrown into a box of sorts. But Tumblr’s heart wasn’t the only box a “Like” system would attempt to throw me into as Facebook’s thumbs up would be much worse.

Facebook, the pioneer of the digital frontier, created a “Like” system that gave no control over the information to me and instead only notified the poster that I “Liked” their contribution to the Internet. Ironically Facebook’s “Like” system reminded me of everything I disliked (pun intended) about the social web. I could like it but once that was done I couldn’t ever do anything about it again. Once again, Facebook was forcing me to use the web the way they wanted me to do so.

And that seems to be their mantra. Their “Like” system is showing up all over the Internet now in an effort to force use of the web in the way they see fit. No stars, no hearts, just arbitrary thumbs ups that ultimately connect everything back to Facebook. I simply have to hold onto hope that, just as Facebook’s creation marked the first major Internet renaissance so too will it’s “Like” system. Though instead of a renaissance that gears my Internet usage in the direction they see fit, I hope the next major revival is driven by a refusal to adapt to Facebook’s will and returns open ended control back to you and me.