Some of you may have already noticed, with the recent release, when you 'like' a blog post or a comment, you now get a few extra points.
8 points every time you 'like' a blog post (up to 20 per day)
4 points every time you 'like' a comment (up to 30 per day)
After this went live, it dawned on us that maybe there is a better way to do this.
The idea of liking a comment or a blog post is a first step in ActiveRain gaining a better understanding of what you like, so that one day we can start to show you content more relevant to you personally. It was also a way to get more people to participate in letting us know what content on the site is really great, since we use your 'likes' (which was previously 'suggest') as a primary factor is determining which posts to feature.
Whenever we give points for something, there is a certain segment of the membership who are going to make sure to maximize their point totals for any given day in which they are active on the site. And we love this!
But does awarding points only to the person who 'liked' something actually serve to surface better content? In looking at the data, it seems that there is this phenomenon where we see bursts of likes from one member in a time frame that indicates that they might not have actually read every post they just liked.
And that made me start to think 'are people just liking stuff to get their quota in on points?' and also 'how could we make a 'like' even more valuable for both the person leaving it, and the person receiving it?'
Right now we reward the person who 'liked' the comment or blog post. But shouldn't we also reward the person that created that awesome thing that you just liked, whether it be a blog post or a comment?
And then how to do ensure that members aren't just randomly liking stuff just to hit their quota for the day?
So we thought up a few different scenarios and we'd like to see what you think before we do anything drastic.
The First Possible Scenario
If you 'like' a blog post, you get 4 points and the author of the blog post gets 4 points. If you 'like' a comment, you get 2 points and the author of the comment gets 2 points.
In this fashion, the authors of great blog posts and comments get rewarded, while at the same time we reward the person out there who is letting us know what stuff is really good.
The Second Possible Scenario (Which, I must warn you, is a little more radical)
If you 'like' a blog post, which really means that you are voting this blog post as one of the best posts you've seen for the day, you would surrender a small portion of your points to author you just 'liked'.
So for a blog post, if you were to 'like' a blog post, you would transfer 4 points from your account to their account. And then we would give the author an additional bonus of 4 points. For a comment, you would give 2 of your points to the author of the comment, and they would get those points, plus an additional 2 points.
Why give up your own points to someone else?
The idea here would be to ensure that people aren't just liking random blog posts they haven't read just to get their point quota in for the day. If you were going to like something, and it was going to cost you a few nominal points, you might think for just an extra second before you 'liked' something. And, in theory, this transfer of points could actually help us surface the absolute best content.
Down the road, the surfacing of content based on your likes is going to be a large part of the ActiveRain story.
So, I ask you, what do you think? Is there a better way we are not thinking about? Let us know in the comments what you think.......
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