If there’s one thing that Facebook has done it’s too change the meaning of the word like. It’s gone from being quite a positive approval to banal and often apathetic signifier of acknowledgment. A co-worker puts up a funny video? Like. A person puts up a photo of their new born child? Like. I’m sure Jesus’s second coming will probably be met with a wave of thumbs up too.

This is interesting because it’s not a real conversation; it’s almost an acknowledgment that you don’t want a conversation. You wouldn’t respond to someone in a conversation simply by shouting ‘LIKE’.

I could talk about Facebook helping bring about the demise of language and interaction for hours, but it would probably be more akin to a rant. Instead I thought I’d explore the other side of ‘liking’ – where people like content, and try to understand exactly what motivates us to ‘like’.

We’re not individuals

We all like to think we’re individuals. From the way, we dress, how we speak, even the people we choose to associate with – they’re all an expression of me. Of who I am.

But actually we’re not all the isolated individuals we think we are. We all wear masks. We all pretend to be something we are not. We want to show that we’re slightly cooler, slightly more confident, slightly more laid back. We present ourselves to the external world as a slightly better version of ourselves.

And that’s because we aren’t just one person. We constantly monitor and shape the image of ourselves. Whether subconsciously through things like body language – we all subtly mirror people we like, or consciously by the clothes we wear, the make-up we put on, even the words we chose to use. We adapt and skew who we are in different situations. And those situations are different depending on which group of people we are with.

We all belong to different groups.

We have friendship groups, family groups, work groups. A man on a night out with old friends will behave differently than with a group of co-workers and certainly different with his family. We change our behaviour because we want to belong; we want to show that we are part of that group. This is especially apparent with young people, who tend to cluster around types of music and ways of dressing, so much so than you can tell which group they belong to just by looking at them. Every generation has these sorts of groups, from mods and rockers to the goths and hipsters. Whilst the need to belong certainly fades a little after teenage years, it’s still present in us all. Even people that say they don’t want to belong or conform are often reacting against something, and end up conforming to the opposite.

But it’s not just the need to belong to groups that drives us; we also feel the need to be significant within those groups. That’s not to say we all want to be famous, but we all want to be recognised. Want to be seen. And a lot of our behaviour is driven by these two needs, the need to belong and the need to be recognised.

This behaviour is heightened in the digital world, where we can shape a digital profile incredibly easily. Picking the right profile picture, only uploading flattering holiday pictures, liking the right bands. All this behaviour is creating a ‘better’ version of ourselves, the person we want the world to see. Liking is a tool we have to build this profile – it’s a form showing who we are, but it’s also an act of sharing – sharing things within our groups.

I like cats

By liking a video on YouTube, or a band’s page or a picture of a cat you are sharing that to your Facebook page and by extension showing it to your friends, you’re saying I like this funny video, I like this band or I like cats. And you’re showing your worth, your significance. You’re showing that you can bring new things to the group, things that they too will like.

Liking fulfils our two base needs – the need to belong and to be significant. We like to show who we are, and we like to bring something to the group.

Broadly speaking there are four types of content that we like: content that our friends will be entertained by, things that our friends will find useful, stuff that makes or saves them money and knowledge that is interesting to them. By liking we are implicitly stating that we are entertaining, useful, helpful with money or interesting as individuals.

Liking is an act of self-expression

Liking, then, is a form of self-expression. It’s us wanting to show who we are, and to get recognition for it. It’s us saying “I like this content that I think you too will like it”.

We like because we want to be liked.

Image credit

The future is going to be amazing. If we want a new gizmo or toy, we will no longer have to go to a shop to buy it, we will be able to download it from the internet and print it using a 3D printer. and if we find a toy we really like we will be able to scan it and make multiple copies. Sure this raises a heap of IP and piracy issues but let’s not think about that for now. It’s a brave new world and a revolution is coming, a maker revolution. People will be able to design and make their own products, completely eliminating the need for large chunks of manufactured products. Brands should be scared (and excited).

And these products will all be connected, because in the future everything is connected. It’s the Internet of things. My house will talk to my car which will talk to my phone which will talk to the sensors embedded in my body. Everything will become one seamlessly integrated system. A technological pantheism, if you will.

And it will all result in big data. Massive data. The hugest data you’ve ever seen. And we’ll all have access to it and it will be lovely.

The future is going to be amazing.

But that future isn’t here yet. It is easy to get carried away when you go to SxSW. Day after day we were shown incredible things. Things that are truly revolutionary, things that will change the world. And it’s exciting. But it’s also very important to be realistic about what it all actually means, especially when you’re surrounded by well educated, well paid men working in creative industries holding the best technology money can buy. Just because everyone at SxSW was talking about 3D printing doesn’t mean the average Joe on the street will be.

Yes 3D printing is becoming more and more affordable, and this means that it’s becoming more and more accessible. But let us not forget that home computing and web publishing software has been ubiquitous for almost a decade, and yet we didn’t all run to the web and create our own home pages. Yes, some of us did (in fact most of those reading probably did), and services like wordpress and more recently tumblr meant a huge amount more people now have blogs. But it’s far from being mainstream. Far more people do not have blogs than do. Just because technology enables people to become more creative doesn’t mean that people want to be more creative. Neil Perkin explores a similar theme with android users – just because you can hack the device doesn’t mean everyone wants to.

Yes everything is becoming more connected with each other, and the internet of things is becoming a reality. But very slowly. I first started reading about the Internet of things in 2009, and even then people had been talking about it for almost a decade. It will happen, and my fridge will talk to my phone. But it’s still not here yet. Nike fuel band et al are showing the possibilities, and the automotive industry are making huge in roads in the space – but we’re a long way from living in a fully connected world. For now, our best bet is to focus on mobile. It is the connecting device. The device that we know everyone has, and that everyone checks. It’s not new and shiny anymore, it’s just the way we communicate, the way we research, the way we entertain ourselves. It’s the single most important device and brands need to start thinking about it a lot more.

Perhaps the most interesting thing was the number of advertising people that turned up to SxSW. Advertising could learn a hell of a lot from start-ups. There is a huge amount of talent we could steal, ideas we can borrow and enthusiasm for trying stuff we should embrace. But, well, advertising has a bit of an image problem. We can get past it, but we need to embrace a new way of thinking and doing if we want to evolve.

What did stand out was just how much stuff there was. Digital stuff. It highlights how online the world is. Which is interesting from an advertising point of view, especially to someone who works in digital advertising. Digital is much more than banners websites email and Facebook. The world is digital, consumers don’t treat digital as a separate channel and neither should we. And I don’t mean everyone is going out to buy Google glasses. But we are using our phones whilst we are shopping, we are second screening whilst watching TV, we’re buying more and more online, streaming our films, paying for things with our mobile apps… That isn’t future gazing stuff. That’s now. There’s a whole world of opportunity for us.

All that being said, I do not want to be accused of being a pessimist. I came away from SxSW energised and enthusiastic, and very keen to do more stuff. Sure the future is a little further away than we’d all like to admit, but if we start reaching for it now, it might come just that little bit faster.

So what are my key take outs for SxSW 2013?

1. 3D printing – Target the early adopters. The creative innovators. The hackers. Let them play with your products. Make it easy to do so.

2. Mobile – Stop talking about it and do it. Seriously, it’s not hard. If your web content isn’t mobile first, go home. If you aren’t using mobile to improve your retail experience, you’re doing it wrong.

3. Do more stuff. Especially digital agencies. Online doesn’t have to be on a screen, and it certainly doesn’t have to be on Facebook.

4. Focus on the masses, but provide for the niche. It’s easier than ever for people to hack things, to break things, to make things. Even if it’s not mainstream, make sure the people that want to do it, can.

5. Get out of silos. The world is digital. The world is mobile. Stop treating them as separate channels, see them as a layer. Almost everything can be improved with a spot of digital goodness. Press, TV, Point of Sale, shop windows. Use digital to join it all up.

6. Focus on today and tomorrow. There are a lot of exciting things that will happen. But the more time you spend thinking about those, the fewer exciting things you will make happen now.

7. Everything they say about an English accent in America is true.