Like

In my recent Pinboard activity, I noticed that on occasion pins get a ‘like’. Other platforms such as Facebook have pages with ‘likes’. Indeed, Pinboard activity is encouraged  to be liked on Facebook, distributing (augmenting?) the effect.

I am not a digital markteer, but having used Facebook for many years, I have a certain understanding  what ‘like’ means.

Yet looking at my Pinboard, I was not entirely sure, especially with regards to the MOOC activity, what the ‘like’ actually entails. Indeed do ‘likes’  across platform indicate the same meaning and associations?

Checking Pinterest FAQ it mentions that ‘Liking a pin adds the image to your profile’s Likes section; the image does not get added to one of your boards.  ’

But perhaps one could like a pin, because one likes the image (an immediate reaction, and very much my visual usage)… and thus why ‘like’ and  not ‘re-pinning’… ?   FAQ mentions ‘A repin maintains the source-link of the image no matter how many times it’s repinned.’…. a complex strategy seems involved.  A picture seems a thousand words. And all these pictures are tracked endlessly.

So here again we have the interchange of visuality, the de-coupling, de-territorialising, de-situating.  Images linked, become unlinked, relinked, re-sited, new narratives ensue.

I then discover that underneath all of this (of course) is the business model, a  commodifcation of our liking.

http://business.pinterest.com/         and this model, as an encouragement, as a way of remembering what we love…