Would someone explain what function a like button serves.
The actual answer?
It’s so that Facebook knows what you like, and can sell target advertising to its clients.
However, before you get all tin-hat about that, there are benefits. You’ve got much more chance of seeing an ad for bike stuff or outdoor gear or whatever. People take the piss out of the watch and Maserati ads on here – well on my FB I get almost entirely bike stuff ads. Including the odd interesting special offer or new product.
So it’s not all bad. Just be a little careful in what you click ‘like’ on. So far Facebook only knows (from direct likes) that I like bikes – this isn’t a secret.
However, it does do things based on your friends’ posts that you click like on – I suspect it scans those, sees how often you like a friends post and shows you the things that THEY like too. Not sure if it does text scans on the actual posts you like though.
I’m not averse to it, because I know there is just an algorithm behind it. I still carefully filter what I put on FB. It kept bugging me to tell it what university I went to, so I said University of Leave Me Alone. Then it prompted me to make friends with hundreds of other people who went there 🙂 I also never check into places either.
