Breaking Down Facebook - The "Like" Button

A few days back, I and a friend of mine had a discussion about Facebook. We talked about the great migration that took place from Orkut to Facebook.

He argued that the only thing stopping another migration like that is lack of a new social network. My friend was of the opinion that to build a social network, all you need is a wall, a place to accept users' status updates, a like button, a way to write comments and a share button. Just a little cooler than Facebook.

I know some of you are going Whaaaat! There's so much more to it!

And it's true. Let's break down Facebook feature by feature and understand how everyone's favourite social network actually works.

Let's start with the most simple feature (apparently):

The "Like" button

This one is the most used Facebook feature and probably the easiest to use. The button literally tells you what it is for.

You see something you like. Click!

So what all things did take place on your simple action of "Click!"

First, the obvious ones:

1. When your cursor is over the like button, show all the reactions available.
2. Enlarge & shake the like button.
3. Make it blue and let it remain in that state.
4. Add a grey coloured area below like button.
5. Show Like symbol or the reaction and your name beside it.

The not so obvious ones:

For the user who liked the post, in this case, Sandesh Patkar:

1. Make a note that user "Sandesh Patkar" has liked a post.
2. Make a note that the post was shared by the user "XYZ".
3. Track where the post was liked. If it was through a computer, mobile browser or Facebook app on Android or iPhone.
4. Also, note that it was liked by Sandesh Patkar at 7.28AM IST.
5. The post was on the topic of "Game of Thrones".
6. It was originally posted by the page "GoT fans" on 11-Aug-2014.
7. Check if Sandesh Patkar has liked any other posts of this page.
8. If no, make sure to show these posts on his timeline.
9. Check if friends of Sandesh Patkar have liked any posts of this page, if yes, show posts liked by them first.
10. If his friends like posts which are similar to this post, show them on his timeline.
11. When showing posts liked by friends, make sure to show the name of the friend who liked it.

12. Also, show similar posts liked by his friends in the Facebook news ticker on the right side of the page.

For friends of user Sandesh Patkar:

1. Check which other friends of user Sandesh Patkar like the page GoT fans.
2. Check if they have liked this post.
3. Check if they share such posts.
4. Among these set of users, check with whom does Sandesh Patkar interact the most.
5. Show a notification to the most interacted users that "Sandesh Patkar liked this post".
6. For other users, display this post on their timeline if they haven't liked this post yet but share such posts.
7. Show this activity in the Facebook news ticker for the friends who match all the above criteria.

For the page or user who posted the post:

1. Show a notification and increase the count of number notification by 1.
2. Show a notification in the notification bar with the exact time at which user Sandesh Patkar clicked Like on the post.
3. Check which other posts the user has liked.
4. Based on these posts, check if anything the page GoT fans have posted which is not liked by the user yet.
5. Show the posts not liked by the user, but similar to the posts he usually likes on his timeline.
6. Also, check if the user likes the page "GoT fans". If not, show the page in "You might want to like" suggestion carousel.
7. Keep suggesting the page for some time to the user and stop it if there is no response from him even after a set period of time depending on his previous behaviour pattern.
8. If the user likes the page, show the users network that he liked that page.
9. Ask them if they would want to like the page. Repeat.
10. Create graphs and generate simple insights for pages based on each and every like the page gets on its posts.
11. Record the user engagement for the posts and display it with what could have been achieved if the page "Boosted" it using Facebook ads.

For businesses:

When it comes to generating revenue, Facebook is an ad company. So what happens between you and a business on your single like?

1. Based on what you liked, in this case, a post relating to GoT, you become a potential target market for all the businesses who deal with something related to Game of Thrones.
2. Depending on how much a business has paid to promote their post or pages, you might see ads for websites and shops which sell GoT merchandise, or ads of streaming services or other pages which produce content. You could also be shown a promotion in which one of the cast members of GoT is present.
3. Your friends who like the post are shown similar ads and sponsored posts.
4. All the sponsored posts and pages also show you which other friend likes it.
5. Also, generate graphs and insights for their posts with suggestions to improve user engagement.

I am sure I have missed a few steps in this. But more or less this is what happens when you do something as trivial as "liking" something on Facebook.

Let's talk numbers...

Every minute, Facebook registers 400 million (2014 data) likes worldwide.

Every single like goes through the above process. In all, they are a total of 37 steps.

That means, 400,000,000 x 40 = 16,000,000,000 steps. 16 billion steps per minute or 266 million steps per second. Though the number looks huge, it's nothing great, even a Pentium Pro processor launched in 1995 could handle it.

But,

If 1 like takes 1 KB of space, then per day, Facebook generates 576 TB of data only from likes! This number is much less than the actual data generated as the space required by 1 like is more than 1 KB and the number of likes in 2017 will also have increased considerably.

If anyone wants to compete with Facebook starting today, he or she not only has to create a better social network but also need to have a robust infrastructure to support the vast amount of data it generates. That's billions of dollars in investment, just on infrastructure. I am not even going near App development, AI, talent acquisition and marketing side of it all.

Whoa, that took up a lot of space for one feature. Maybe I'll write about other features as separate articles.

While you are here, have a look at my previous article: The Curious Case of Paid WhatsApp

In this article, I talk about how Facebook is going to monetize WhatsApp by introducing it as a paid service for businesses and what it means for regular users of WhatsApp like you and me. Do check it out!

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