Then: I Like Ike; Now: I Can Like Most Anything

We all have things that we “like.” Might be a restaurant, could be a favorite pair of shoes or a certain flavor of ice cream at your local creamery; the list could go on and on. I have always been interested in understanding what people “like” – we can learn a lot about each other that way, and truth be told, I have often drawn likes and dislikes from other peoples opinions and views; I am my own person and can make up my mind, but I learn a lot from others.

This is not new behavior for humans. But what is new is the emerging development that more and more consumers are relying on personal recommendations, and blocking out all of the “noise” that has been created by advertisers trying to influence consumer behavior. One of the cool things about the Internet is that we are able to participate in sharing things that we like or dislike, from politicians to new products and services.

Topical or niche communities have built deep and extensive databases of information into their message boards. Trip Advisor and Yelp are probably the best examples of consumers voicing their views on what they like for travel and restaurants. Surely, your “wish list” on Amazon.com indicates what you would like to

get. Same holds true for your “want list”‘ on Swaptree.

This sharing is a wonderful way for other members to learn more about a particular product or service. This serves as a real source of information in our society today. The advent of search engines and social networks are now allowing these recommendations that used to be only available at a particular site, to be easily synicated across the web so millions of people can now learn more about various products and services that other consumers like.

For the last few years I have been sharing information on my blog. Google indexes my blog and a few of my posts about things I “like” pretty prominently in search results. One example is this post about a book I “liked” called Inspired, which is about how to build products that people love. Thanks to Google’s search results, my “like” of this book meant other people searching for “Inspired” and “books” in Google received a solid recommendation from me.

Another interesting development in the last few months was Facebook opening up their service so that a site like Swaptree could place the Facebook “Thumbs Up” image, which universally depicts something you “like”, on our site. We launched this last week on the Swaptree item detail pages. Swaptree members can now rate and indicate that they “like” millions of items in our product database.  For example, by clicking on that “like” button and a message is posted to my individual Facebook feed and all of your friends on Facebook can see that “Jeff Bennett Likes Inspired on Swap.com.” This link is clickable from Facebook back to the item detailed page on Swaptree.

I always say that swapping is social. It is. It takes two parties to swap…and sometimes on Swaptree three. The key for swapping is to know what you want, and share what you want. A key aspect of this decision process is the discovery to determine what you want. For me, and many of you, this process is very social. I love many books, artists and movies. I am going to express which ones I like and as I do this I am going to share my likes with my Swaptree friends…and now my Facebook friends.  My prediction: many of my friends will see theses links on Facebook and then discover Swaptree. This means more members, and more members means more items on have lists and more swaps for all of us.

“Like” what you see on Swaptree? Share it with your friends, and friend us on Facebook so we can see your suggestions, too!

Happy Swapping,

Jeff Bennett, SwapChief