Over the weekend, I was surfing about the CNN website, checking the news. I wasn’t paying too much attention when I stumbled upon a tragic headline about a shooting in a Dutch shopping mall.
As the story was very short, little more than a headline, my eyes were drawn to the Facebook and Twitter buttons. In particular, I saw that visitors were given the option to ‘Recommend’ the story on Facebook. Given the headline of the story, I was glad to see that the ‘Like’ button was not an option.
Thinking about Facebook and its choice of words: like and recommend (which is something new to me), I was struck by the limitations of words that must fit into a template. Both like and recommend have positive connotations. However, I think news articles that deal with more somber topics like a mall shooting or the recent Japanese tsunami should have other options. My first thought is something more general and specific to what the Facebook functionality offers: share.
Share is not post modern enough.
I find it interesting when people “like” their friends’ status that really should not be “liked” — for example when my friend posted about her mother’s grave illness and then posted about the funeral arrangments after her mother had passed — and several of her “friends” “liked” her status updates — very weird if you ask me!
Says a lot about the kind of people you like, Meaghan.