Facebook-Mitarbeiter Andrew Bosworth (aktuell verantwortlich für die Teams für Facebook Chat, Facebook Inbox und Facebook Groups)beantwortet auf Quora die Frage nach der Entstehungsgeschichte des Like-Buttons:
July 13, 2007 - In the initial email discussion about a project codenamed "Props" between me, Justin Rosenstein , Leah Pearlman, Ezra Callahan, and Akhil Wable, we boil down the discussion of symbols to:
- stars (concern that it would translate to "I give this 1 star" which is a bad review)
- plus sign (possibly accompanied with a minus sign, apropos to this discussion)
- thumbs up (concern about internationalization, this is a bad sign in some places)
We also consider lots of language and settle, temporarily, on "awesome."
[..]
February 9, 2009 - Facebook launches "like" and is widely accused of stealing the idea from Friendfeed. I believe the credit for getting this out the door goes to Jonathan Pines and Jared Morgenstern as well as designer Soleio