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The internet wouldn’t be the same without the Like button, the thumbs-up icon that Facebook and other online services turned into digital catnip.Like it or not, the button has served as a creative catalyst, a dopamine delivery system, and an emotional battering ram. It also became an international tourist attraction after Facebook plastered the symbol on a giant sign that stood outside its Silicon Valley headquarters until the company rebranded itself as Meta Platforms in 2021.A new book, Like: The Button That Changed The World, delves into the convoluted story behind a symbol that’s become both the manna and bane of a digitally driven society.It’s a tale that traces back to gladiator battles for survival during the Roman empire before fast-forwarding to the early 21st century when technology trailblazers such as Yelp cofounder Russ Simmons, Twitter cofounder Biz Stone, PayPal cofounder Max Levchin, YouTube cofounder Steve Chen, and Gmail inventor Paul Buchheit were experimenting with different ways using the currency of recognition to prod people to post compelling content online for free.As part of that noodling, a Yelp employee named Bob Goodson sat down on May 18, 2005, and drew a crude sketch of thumbs-up and thumbs-down gesture as a way for people to express their opinions about restaurant reviews posted on the site. Yelp passed on adopting Goodson’s suggested symbol and, instead, adopted the “useful,” “funny,” and “cool” buttons conceived by Simmons. But the discovery of that old sketch inspired Goodson to team up with Martin Reeves to explore how the Like button came to be in their new book. This image provided by BCG shows a sketch by Bob Goodson that included a crude concept of what would become the Like button on May 18, 2005. [Photo: BCG via AP] “It’s something simple and also elegant because the Like button says, ‘I like you, I like your content. And I am like you. I like you because I am like you, I am part of your tribe,’ ” Reeves said during an interview with the Associated Press. “But it’s very hard to answer the simple question, ‘Well, who invented the Like button?'” The social wellspring behind a social symbol Although Facebook is the main reason the Like button became so ubiquitous, the company didn’t invent it and almost discarded it as drivel. It took Facebook nearly two years to overcome the staunch resistance by CEO Mark Zuckerberg before finally introducing the symbol on its service on February 9, 2009five years after the social network’s creation in a Harvard University dorm room. As happens with many innovations, the Like button was born out of necessity but it wasn’t the brainchild of a single person. The concept percolated for more than a decade in a Silicon Valley before Facebook finally embraced it.“Innovation is often social and Silicon Valley was the right place for all this happen because it has a culture of meet-ups, although it’s less so now,” Reeves said. “Everyone was getting together to talk about what they were working on at that time and it turned out a lot of them were working on the same stuff.”The effort to create a simple mechanism to digitally express approval or dismay sprouted from a wellspring of online services such as Yelp and YouTube whose success would hinge on their ability to post commentary or video that would help make their sites even more popular without forcing them to spend a lot of money for content. That effort required a feedback loop that wouldn’t require a lot of hoops to navigate Hollywood’s role in the Like button’s saga And when Goodson was noodling around with his thumbs-up and thumbs-down gesture, it didn’t come out of a vacuum. Those techniques of signaling approval and disapproval had been ushered into the 21st century zeitgeist by the Academy Award-winning movie, “Gladiator,” where Emperor Commodusportrayed by actor Joaquin Phoenixused the gestures to either spare or slay combatants in the arena.But the positive feelings conjured by a thumbs up date even further back in popular culture, thanks to the 1950s-era character Fonzie played by Henry Winkler in the top-rated 1970s TV series, “Happy Days.” The gesture later became a way of expressing delight with a program via a remote control button for the digital video recorders made by TiVO during the early 2000s. Around the same time, Hot or Nota site that solicited feedback on the looks of people who shared photos of themselvesbegan playing around with ideas that helped inspire the Like button, based on the book’s research.Others that contributed to the pool of helpful ideas included the pioneering news service Digg, the blogging platform Xanga, YouTube and another early video site, Vimeo. The button’s big breakthrough But Facebook unquestionably turned the Like button into a universally understood symbol, while also profiting the most from its entrance into the mainstream. And it almost didn’t happen.By 2007, Facebook engineers had been tinkering with a Like button, but Zuckerberg opposed it because he feared the social network was already getting too cluttered and, Reeves said, “is he didn’t actually want to do something that would be seen as trivial, that would cheapen the service.”But FriendFeed, a rival social network created by Buchheit and now OpenAI Chairman Bret Taylor, had no such qualms, and unveiled its own Like button in October 2007.But the button wasn’t successful enough to keep the lights on at FriendFeed, and the service ended up being acquired by Facebook. By the time that deal was completed, Facebook had already introduced a Like buttononly after Zuckerberg rebuffed the original idea of calling it an Awesome button “because nothing is more awesome than awesome,” according to the book’s research.Once Zuckerberg relented, Facebook quickly saw that the Like button not only helped keep its audience engaged on its social network but also made it easier to divine people’s individual interests and gather the insights required to sell the targeted advertising that accounted for most of Meta Platform’s $165 billion in revenuelast year. The button’s success encouraged Facebook to take things even further by allowing other digital services to ingrain it into their feedback loops and then, in 2016, added six more types of emotions”love,” “care,” “haha,” “wow,” “sad,” and “angry.”Facebook hasn’t publicly disclosed how many responses it has accumulated from the Like button and its other related options, but Levchin told the book’s authors that he believes the company has probably logged trillions of them. “What content is liked by humansis probably one of the singularly most valuable things on the internet,” Levchin said in the book.The Like button also has created an epidemic of emotional problems, especially among adolescents, who feel forlorn if their posts are ignored and narcissists whose egos feast on the positive feedback. Reeves views those issues as part of the unintentional consequences that inevitably happen because “if you can’t even predict the beneficial effects of a technological innovation how could you possibly forecast the side effects and the interventions?”Even so, Reeves believes the Like button and the forces that coalesced to create it tapped into something uniquely human.“We thought serendipity of the innovation was part of the point,” Reeves said. “And I don’t think we can get bored with liking or having our capacity to compliment taken away so easily because it’s the product of 100,000 years of evolution.” Michael Liedtke, AP Technology Writer
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E-Commerce
Switch, PS5, and XBox might be the biggest names in video games, but David Lee and a group of entrepreneurial alums from companies like Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Meta are carving out a niche market with Nex, a new alternative. The company’s Nex Playground device has sold more than 200,000 units. Instead of buying individual games, families buy a subscription-based collection of 40-plus titles. Like the old Nintendo Wii, Nex focuses on family-friendly, movement-based games. The Nex device plugs into TVs for motion-controlled experiences. Instead of controllers, the device uses a built-in camera that enables you to play games by moving your hands and feet. With national retail expansion underway across 5,000 stores, Nex positions itself as a simpler alternative to pricier, fancier, thumb-based video games. Fast Company spoke with Lee, the founding CEO, about how Nex competes against industry giants and how the company develops distinct hardware and games. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity. How do you position Nex in relation to Nintendo and Xbox? We all have a focus on core customers. Nintendo went back to what they were doinghandheld gaming and Mariotheir biggest franchises. Xbox users are gamers, people who got an Xbox to play games like Halo. When Microsoft was under pressure from PS4’s lower price, they unbundled Kinect and collapsed that system to compete. We come into this space without any of those existing customers. We decided from the ground up to serve motion gaming. The design of our device, the pricing, how we use one camera to track multiple people, moving sensors into software and AIit’s all about keeping it affordable with a subscription service that takes care of the whole family. Why did you build a dedicated device after starting with mobile apps? Before we built Nex Playground, we were building motion games on phones. What we discovered is that when we create dedicated hardware instead, we have a much deeper relationship with customers. When there’s a device where the only thing it does is bring the family together to play active games, it shows big potential. When you use your TV for a motion-game experience, you pay much more attention to it than you would to a game on your phone. The experience is a lot better, and customers love it more. How are families using Nex in ways you didn’t expect? When we started searching for customers and building our Facebook community, which now has over 20,000 people, we discovered new use cases. We found that when kids come back from school, we have a half-hour where they just play. On weekends, they play when friends come over. [Photo: Nex] We’ve also found that when kids are at school, parents want fitness experiences for themselves. Even grandparents derive benefits when they have something to do with their body. We’re defining what role we play for different people in the family, delivering benefits at different times of day, different days of the week, even different seasons of the year. In summer when kids are off school, we can occupy them and get them moving and learning. Whats your approach to developing games in a saturated market? We’re focusing on safety, privacy, and security first since we’re serving families. We have our first-party teams building games, but we also work with ten studio deals already, with seven games launched. We bring in partners whose games we like, and we share revenue with them. We want to keep our model simplewe have our subscription model and want to supply and delight users all year. We don’t want to open the system to many games that might be low quality. We’re curating a set of content and working with developers who are passionate about creating great things. Our business model is simple, honest, and sustainableno ads, no in-app purchases. The moment you open to third parties, they think about different ways to make money. For families, we don’t want to overwhelm themwe just want to serve them really well. How do you keep up with hardware competition? We think about our hardware in a similar way to how Amazon thinks about the Kindle or Apple thinks about the iPad. Every year, we want to do something better to create perfect experiences. For example, we improved the remote control from 2023 to 2024. We learned that the joystick was a little hard for young kids to useI saw my daughter struggling to press itso we made it simpler. [Photo: Nex] We’re always looking at what problems people face and how to improve. The hardware cycle is yearly, and we might be able to do something new each year. But we’re not thinking about something dramatically differentwe have a pretty good long trajectory ahead. A lot of improvements actually come through software. With the same hardware, you get access to new technology we develop as detection technologies get better. We don’t want to force customers to buy new hardware to play something new. We think about compatibility and how not to fully obsolete customers. This is a device that can serve your family for years to come. Given how much attention is paid to Nintendos new Switch, how are people discovering Nex? According to our surveys, roughly 40% of customers hear about us from friends and families. The next-largest segment, about 20%, comes from our online ads. Another 13% first see us in retail stores. Currently, we’re in 700 Target stores, 100 Walmart locations, and 200 Best Buy stores. This year, we have a national retail expansion to over 5,000 stores. Amazon is also now recognizing us as a new gaming system categoryif you look at Amazon video games, they put Nex Playground right next to PlayStation, Xbox, and Swith as top-level tabs, even though we’re way smaller than any of them. What’s your long-term vision for Nex? We want to keep kids active, bring families together, and even help keep elderly people active so they can stay independent. We want to tie your family together locally and remotely. We’re happy seeing more grandparents buying Nex for their grandkids and then saying “I want one too.”
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E-Commerce
Commuters in the New York City and New Jersey area are in for what is likely to be a weekend of increased congestion and more limited transit options after the engineers who run the New Jersey Transit rail system voted to go on strike. That strike is now in effect and could continue throughout the weekendand potentially even longer. Heres what you need to know about the NJ Transit strike. Whats happened? On Thursday, the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET) announced that its members who run the trains in the New Jersey Transit Corporation, better known as NJ Transit, were officially on strike. The strike came after the BLET and NJ Transit failed to reach a deal on a new contract for the approximately 450 engineers and trainees who run the railway and are represented by the union. The main issue centers around a disagreement on wage increases for the workers. News of the strike is no doubt a disappointment to the 100,000 NYC and NJ commuters who use the line daily, especially after both sides were reportedly close to a deal. Talks between both sides went on for 15 hours on Thursday and ended shortly before 10 p.m., reports CNN. The strike then officially began at 12:01 a.m., today, Friday, May 16. It is the first time union members working for New Jersey Transit have gone on strike in 42 years. The last time NJ Transit workers took to the picket lines was in 1983. What do the striking rail workers want? The BLETs union members are striking because no acceptable deal was reached on wage increases for its members. In a notice announcing the strike, BLET says that its NJ Transit members have not received a raise for five years. The union also notes that NJ Transit engineers make at least $10 less per hour than the engineers for other passenger railroads that share the same train platforms as the ones used by NJ Transit. NJ Transit has a half-billion dollars for a swanky new headquarters and $53 million for decorating the interior of that unnecessary building, BLET National President Mark Wallace said in a prepared statement. They gave away $20 million in revenue during a fare holiday last year. They have money for penthouse views and pet projects, just not for their front-line workers. Enough is enough. We will stay out until our members receive the fair pay that they deserve. In addition to the strike now in effect, from 4 a.m. this morning BLET members began picketing at multiple locations, including NJ Transits Newark headquarters, New York’s Penn Station, and the Atlantic City Rail Terminal in Atlantic City. The union says that despite the transit agency having the funds for a raise, NJ Transit managers walked out of talks before 10 p.m. on Thursday. What does NJ Transit say? NJ Transit, for its part, has posted a fact sheet about the strike, which lays out six claims and what the transit agency says are the facts about the claims. NJ Transit says that it offered BLET members a competitive wage and benefits package that all 14 other rail labor unions accepted in 2021. It also says that under its offer, NJ Transit locomotive engineers would have seen their average total earnings rise from $135,000 per year now to $172,856 as of July 1, 2027. The transit agency says these wages are competitive within the region and higher than the wages Philadelphias SEPTA workers receive. It concedes that the wages are lower than those received by MTA (Metro-North Railroad and Long Island Rail Road) workers in New York, but it adds, It isn’t reasonable to live and work in New Jersey, but demand to be paid like you live and work in New York. How long could the strike last? That is impossible to tell at this point. In theory, NJ Transit and BLET could agree to return to the negotiating table at any timealthough thats unlikely to happen today. However, on Thursday, NJ Transit CEO Kris Kolluri said that both sides are currently scheduled to start negotiating again on Sunday. But just because negotiations are scheduledor even begindoesnt mean the strike will be called off anytime soon. Indeed, if BLET would call off the strike, it may lessen the pressure on NJ Transit to meet their demands. CNN notes that when Southeastern Pennsylvania Transit Authority (SEPTA) workers went on strike in the 1980s, the strike lasted for 108 days. A strike of Metro-North workers lasted 42 days, and a strike of Long Island Railroad workers lasted 11 days. What should I do if I plan to use NJ Transit today? You should rethink your travel plans. NJ Transit has posted a notice warning of the complete suspension of services on its rail lines. The agency says it strongly encourages all those who can work from home to do so and limit traveling on the NJ TRANSIT system to essential purposes only. However, if you do need to commute, the agency says that it is adding very limited capacity to existing New York commuter routes on its bus services. The agency also says that from May 19, its regional Park & Ride service will operate on a first come, first served basis. Commuters who need to use NJ transit during the strike are strongely encouraged to check out the agencys rail strike information page here. What if Im seeing the Shakira or Beyoncé concerts? From this weekend, there are also two large music events planned in the area that NJ Transit normally serves. The first is the Shakira concert at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, which begins at 7:30 p.m. tonight, May 16. Then, Beyoncé is scheduled to perform at the same stadium for five nights between May 22 and May 29. MetLife Stadium has posted some travel options for concertgoers who are seeing the Shakira show tonight. The stadium points out that there will be no NJ Transit bus or rail service to the stadium tonight. It says that those coming to the concert from New York City may be able to use the Coach USA bus service, which it says will be limited. The venue also asks people who plan to arrive by car to please carpool and arrive early to help ease congestion. Will Congress step in? When it comes to transportation strikes, Congress does have the authority to act and compel workers to accept a deal and return to their jobs, notes CNN. The last time Congress did this was in December 2022 when it voted to force workers from the countrys four major freight railroads to accept a deal. However, CNN points out that Congress likely felt more compelled to step in at that time because the strike affected mst of the country. The NJ Transit strike is a local affair, which means Congress may be more reluctant to interfere.
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