A riveting insider's look at the creation and evolution of the like button and what it reveals
about innovation business and culture--and its profound impact on modern human interaction.
"...an entertaining new book by Martin Reeves and Bob Goodson on the origins of the "like"
button." -- The Economist Over 160 billion times a day someone taps a like button. How could
something that came out of nowhere become so ubiquitous--and even so addictive? How did this
seemingly ordinary social media icon go from such a small and unassuming invention to something
so intuitive and universally understood that it has scaled well beyond its original intent?
This is the story of the like button and how it changed our lives. In Like bestselling author
and renowned strategy expert Martin Reeves and coauthor Bob Goodson--Silicon Valley veteran and
one of the originators of the like button--take readers on a quest to uncover the origins of
the thumbs-up gesture how it became an icon on social media and what's behind its power.
Through insights from key players including the founders of Yelp PayPal YouTube Twitter
LinkedIn Gmail and FriendFeed you'll hear firsthand the disorderly serendipitous process
from which the like button was born. It's a story that starts with a simple thumbs-up cartoon
but ends up with surprises and new mysteries at every turn some of them as deep as
anthropological history and others as speculative as the AI-charged future. But this is much
more than the origin story of the like button. Drawing on business and innovation theory
evolutionary biology social psychology neuroscience and other human-centered disciplines
this deeply researched book offers smart and unexpected insights into how this little icon
changed our world--and all of us in the process.
