Suggestion for HunchLike…I Mean OpenLike

Last month Facebook introduced their “social plugins” which are a set of options to include Facebook functionality in a website, application or blog. Alex at NextWeb has a good recap of the social plugins launch. The most popular social plugin Facebook launched was the Like button. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg noted that in the first 24 hours after the Like button launched, over one billion “likes” will be served. MG Siegler at Techcrunch did the math and notes that this means over 30 billion likes will be served over a month.

Of course the instant that Facebook launched all of their new changes, many which affect privacy, there was a tremendous amount of debate as to whether Facebook is good or evil. I will leave the privacy debate for another day and column. Nearly ever blog I’ve visited since the launch has the Like button installed. There’s really no reason not to as it is only used when a reader is interested in sharing a piece of content with their Facebook friends. And since traffic = cash, it’s nearly a must to use it. In case you are reading this in a RSS reader, the Like button was added to CN shortly after the launch.

Hunch founder Chris Dixon and a few of his colleagues created “OpenLike” which is described as, “…a simple way to tell other sites about the things you like and dislike on the web. Instead of having all of your preferences stored by a single company, OpenLike gives you a way to send your data where you want it.” Seems relatively similar to the sharing offerings by AddThis and ShareThis. I assume that AddThis and ShareThis and all of the other sharing widgets will integrate the Facebook Like button at some point in the near future.

Here’s what the OpenLike button setup looks like when you use the default code (it’s a static image so it renders in the feed):

By default OpenLike loads: Facebook, Hunch, Digg, Reddit and StumbleUpon. Assuming the OpenLike button setup gains traction across the Web, this might become the best free (and brilliant) marketing program for Hunch.

Suggestion for OpenLike

I’ve got one main suggestion for the OpenLike button set if it’s really going to be open – remove the default buttons.

 There is absolutely no reason there needs to be any default buttons. If this is to be “open” then make it user-defined. You can set the buttons if you wish, but by default you get the setup I’ve displayed above. I would change this to force users to select the options they want to include in their OpenLike button setup. The user would just select the “like” options they want to include. The OpenLike website could be configured to create a simple Like selector which would spit out the code to include — this tool is critical to mass adoption.

Why is this change important? We know defaults create issues of favoritism (see Twitter, Friendfeed, etc.) and if this button is going to be “open” then make it so. Also, using defaults can cause issues in the future as more buttons look to be added — what’s the process of being added as a default? How were the first 5 selected – clearly 4 of the 5 have huge traffic and some mainstream audience already. What happens when another new site wants to be added? Is there a committee that has to approve all new default requests? And more importantly, if new sites are added to the default list, what happens if a user isn’t interested in displaying the new site?

A good example of a listing would be NY-based AdaptiveBlue. Their current Glue offering uses like functionality for user learning. While I see AdaptiveBlue CEO Alex Iskold is on the developer list for OpenLike, why aren’t they included in the default offering? I could go on and it’s so easy to see why a default listing is just going to create issues and the time spent on discussing the default issue could be better spent elsewhere.

Forcing the user to select which options they want on their OpenLike bar removes this issue completely, make the service 100% transparent and allows for user choice today, tomorrow and in the future. It’s important to make this change now because the usage is low and the code can be easily changed.

I like the concept of the OpenLike bar and the developer community growing around it. Making the change I’ve listed above will help the community grow and could provide a new level of awareness for services across the Web that use “likes for learnings”. I joined the developer forum and will provide updates from the group in the future.