Sad news today for social media influencers. A report coming from Tech Crunch (TC) indicates some changes coming down the pipeline which may directly affect their viability. Seemingly, this new story substantiates our April coverage regarding a similar scenario with Instagram. From this, the image-sharing platform is making attempts to ease its detriment to mental health. Consequently, test runs in Canada, Brazil, Australia, New Zealand, Italy, Ireland, and Japan must be yielding positive results. Therefore, dissolving the like count for parent company Facebook is what we’ll be seeing next. Although, much more than the user’s mental health seems to be at stake here.
After a similar discovery on Instagram by Tech Crunch’s reverse engineer Jane Manchun Wong, it’s pretty safe to say the test is coming to Facebook soon. In fact, after reaching out to Facebook, TC is now confirming the test is on its way. Although the results are being withheld, it’s safe to say they were good enough for beta testing on its large customer base. So, instead of seeing a running tally of your like count, you’ll likely see something similar to the image above. Likewise, FB hopes to reduce “like envy” when users scroll through their news feeds. In other words, hopefully, not seeing a friend’s posts consistently outperform their own will boost the mental health of users.
Like Counts Just a Small Part of the Bigger Picture
Beyond the major issue of mental health, it appears the social media giant has concerns about its bottom line. Apparently, like counts are affecting the platform’s overall usage. In turn, Facebook could potentially be taking a hit on its ad revenue. It’s already trying to hoist Instagram’s popularity by challenging Snapchat’s messaging function with an app upgrade of its own. Therefore, it’s easy to see why it’s now trying to mitigate any decline in the popularity of Facebook- the cash cow. It seems all but obvious that declines in likes will motivate people to jump ship for alternative apps beginning to gain traction. Similarly, the impression of being unpopular would yield the same result. That could spell doom for Facebook who continues to dominate as a popular advertising destination for countless organizations.
It appears the like count is next up on the chopping block as FB continues to find that delicate balance between profits and user friendliness. Nevertheless, it’s great to see the embattled company doing its part to address the mental health of its billions of users. Be on the lookout for more changes to your favorite social media platforms as we continue to bring you the latest in today’s tech news.
