We don't LIKE the LIKE word...

[Gerry]

We received some product feedback the other day and I thought I would answer the question here on the forum as its quite an interesting question.  I have kept the originator anonymous, the comment was..

Quote

please change the LIKE to another word, such as ACCEPT or something else, this is a work based application so we are hardly ever to LIKE something . 

Now the reason why we use the word "like" is because its something people are familiar with in other applications.   Although one can draw a literal meaning from the word its self, there are in fact two literal meanings of the word "like" in the English language.   The first is when you linken one thing to another thing, for example "That car is just like that other car" so its a comparison of sorts.  The second form is when you express your liking of something, for example "I like that car".

In the context of our application we use the term like as a sentiment of agreement, so we are using the first meaning above where you express that your in general agreement with the comment/posts, in other words you expression of approval is like others expression of approval.  Personally for me, there are many things at work I actually do like, and sometimes there are things at work I even love so I will tend to use the like button to both express agreement and sometimes I will use it to like something (for example, a picture of a car I really like), so I find it hard to agree with the logic of this suggestion.  If we were to ever change that word a most likely candidate would be AGREE but thats too formal and would be like a contract agreement, and with that word I could not express my liking of something - so in this case the English language and the dual meaning of the same word actually works out quite well for what its being used for. 

Now all that being said, i would have no intention of changing it in the product, but, if you so desire, using language translations it is of course possible to change the word like to anything you want, all you need to do is agree with whoever is managing your instance and they can use the translation capabilities of the platform to change it for everyone on your instance. 

Gerry

[Guest]

Keep it as Like, it makes sense and we need to be consistent with our approach between business and consumer apps. Also, its coming into more and more business apps, just look at Microsoft and OWA - you can now Like email messages which is great as it saves time replying to a message.

[Gerry]

Adam, I just "liked" your comment  I do agree with you, I said we would not change it in the app by default, but you can on an individual instance if you like

Gerry