Looking Over the Horizon

I noticed that Google Reader has added a new feature recently, the Like. I love the like.

The like does two things. First, in addition to being able to Star or Share a news item, users can now Like it. This essentially creates three levels for users to flag items in their feed. The Star is for personal memory (individual). The Share flags an item for your friends and other followers (group). And now the Like sends a signal out to the public.

Alone this would be a feature of marginal value. But the second piece is that each news item now shows you whether anyone else has "liked" the item. More importantly, clicking on the number of likes shows you all the Reader users who "liked" it and provides one-click ability to either view their google profile or start following them. Essentially it lets you peak beyond the horizon and find others heading in the same direction as you.

Where it gets really cool though is if you apply the enterprise perspective. Imagine if everyone in the US Government was on the same platform to consume all their news and other data feeds. Say you work in USDA cyber security. You probably know a few people in the Agencies and a couple in other Departments that you have met working on projects, so naturally you Follow them. Then one day you are reading the DHS cyber blog and there is an important message with a few likes, so you check out the user names. Next, you read an item on Wired, and you notice someone from SSA liked the DHS item and also liked this one. Then you see an item that is a new report on FISMA best practices that you like, but also this mysterious person likes.

Guess what, you have just discovered someone with the same portfolio and interests as you. So you can do two things. In the old days you would randomly call them up and say "hey we do the same thing" and maybe you'll get lunch once or twice or even find a great opportunity for interagency collaboration. But likely you won't, because based on those few data points and that you have a job to get done building a relationship isn't worth the investment. But now you can just Follow them.

Your investment now is the click of a button and potentially wading through a couple stupid extra items in your Shared stream. But the potential is that they will share some great stuff (after all, we already know you like similar things). And maybe you'll even comment on some items and strike up a digital relationship. Which means that if you finally do move to the "hey lets get lunch" level you already have a good sense of the baseline value you can expect from the relationship.

The idea also has a ton of merit from a systems perspective. Right now, networks (especially in the enterprise environment) are largely based on where people sit. The like system provides a way to connect with people based on what they know. A key feature of the "2.0" world is the notion of meritocracy. The likes are another valuable system for breaking down the traditional walls that silo people and knowledge and then augmenting users capacity so that they can drink from the firehose of info now directed at them.