← The Brainy Business | Understanding the Psychology of Why People Buy | Behavioral Economics
The Brainy Business | Understanding the Psychology of Why People Buy | Behavioral Economics
505. The Like Button: A Small Click with a Massive Impact w/ Bob Goodson
00:45:22
In this episode of The Brainy Business podcast, Melina Palmer sits down with Bob Goodson, co-author of the intriguing book, Like: The Button That Changed the World. Bob takes us on a captivating journey through the origins and evolution of the "like"...
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- [00:01]
Melina Palmer
Hey there Melina here. If you've been thinking about raising your prices, maybe waiting for the right time or the perfect plan, consider this your sign. Clients expect prices to rise right now. The key is making them feel good about saying yes. And that's exactly what we do in our four week pricing sprint, aligning your strategy, story and price with behavioral science. I work directly with just 12 clients a year on this and there are only three spots left. In 2025 you'll walk away with more than just new prices. You will have a behavioral pricing framework you can confidently use again and again and again. Is now your time to raise your prices and sell more confidently? Email me at melina the brainybusiness.com and let's talk. And of course, when you're ready, let's start the show. Welcome to episode 505 of the Brainy Business Understanding the Psychology of why People Buy. In today's episode, I'm excited to introduce you to Bob Goodson, co author of the new book like the Button that Changed the World. Ready? Let's get started.
- [01:18]
Bob Goodson
You are listening to the Brainy Business Podcast where we dig into the psychology of why people buy and help you incorporate behavioral economics into your business, making it more brain friendly. Now here's your host, Melina Palmer.
- [01:34]
Melina Palmer
Hello. Hello everyone. My name is Melina Palmer and I want to welcome you to the Brainy Business Podcast. Have you ever wondered where the like button came from? Why a thumbs up became the universal symbol for approval online and how it shaped the world we live in today? It's an amazing story and today you're going to hear it from someone who was there at the beginning. Bob Goodson, co author of of like the Button that Changed the World is here to share the fascinating true story behind one of the most recognizable symbols in our digital lives. Bob was the first employee at Yelp, where early versions of the like button were developed long before it hit Facebook and changed everything. His career since then, founding the AI company Quid and working at the intersection of human behavior, technology and innovation gives him a unique perspective on how small ideas can ripple out to create massive change. This conversation is a perfect follow up to the recent refreshed episodes on mirror neurons and unboxing videos where we talked about curiosity, anticipation and the power of connection. You'll hear how something is seemingly simple as a thumbs up taps deep into our brain's wiring and what it teaches us about innovation, human behavior, and even the future of AI. Really quickly, before we get into the conversation, I want to be sure you know that there are links in the show, notes for my top related past episodes and books, ways to get in touch with Bob and myself and more. It's all within the app you're listening to and at the brainy business.com 505. Now let's talk about that like button. Bob Goodson, welcome to the Brainy Business podcast.
- [03:15]
Bob Goodson
Thanks Molina.
- [03:17]
Melina Palmer
Yes, super excited to have you here. We've already had our little pre chat and I feel like I'm a little bit over the top. I'm fangirling for the like button for sure. But before we get into the conversation too much for everyone who doesn't yet know you, can you share a little bit about yourself and the work that you do?
- [03:38]
Bob Goodson
Thank you. Well, my name is Bob Goodson. I grew up in the uk, but I've spent most of my adult life in San Francisco working on various technology products. I was the first employee of Yelp, which is probably the one product I worked on that your listeners will most be aware of. And then I started a company called Quid, which applies AI to understand the world's media and social media data, to help brands understand the context their customers are living in. And yeah, and I'm fascinated by human behavior and various ways and fields to help us understand it better.
- [04:17]
Melina Palmer
Awesome. Well, I know I gave you the heads up here. I feel like everyone will be fascinated. I know I am. Can you share a little bit about, you know, how did you find yourself as, you know, first employee there at Yelp? How did we get here?
- [04:31]
Bob Goodson
Well, I had a long interest in programming when I was about 8 years old. My uncle left a book at the house called how to teach yourself to Code. And I had an Atari 130 XE at the time and really loved to play video games and decided I'd try to write some and edit some. So it kind of, I suppose my first exposure to computers was in the sense of helping them do cool stuff for us. And so that's how I see computing. And then fast forward to the early days of the web. In the middle of to late 90s, I got very interested in applying this to the web and seeing potential there. So I started building websites of various kinds, including for a company that I worked for when I was 18. And then when I went to university I started one of the early social networks. So it was in 2002 that I launched it and it was to connect students at Oxford based on their interests and academic interests and business interests. And there were no photos, but it was still Very popular and spread very quickly. And then I met the co founder of PayPal, Max Levchin, who I showed these various projects to when I was 23 and he invited me to San Francisco to work in an incubator. And we started. We built four consumer Internet apps. This is in 2004, three and four. And one of those was Yelp. So I found myself, you know, being recruited by the co founders of Yelp to join their team as a, as a product manager and writing a little bit of front end code.
- [06:17]
Melina Palmer
Hmm, that's super awesome. And such a cool journey. And I love the, you know, taking the leaps, I guess. Have you always been a, would you say courageous person in that way that you say like, yeah, like let's go work in this incubator and move to San Francisco that early. Does that seem like it tracks for you or was that kind of out of personality to do that?
- [06:41]
Bob Goodson
Yeah, I suppose I probably think of myself as quite conservative in my life choices, although from the outside they may not look that way. But I think I've always been drawn to this idea of making asymmetric bets where the cost of trying something is very low, but the potential rewards are very high. And looking for opportunities to do that, both in business and investments as well as in life choices and career choices. And to me, although I was at Oxford, I was studying medieval literature and language theory and I had a full scholarship. Finally, everything was covered and I could be there for between two and four years. I could get a PhD if I wanted by the end of that period. And, and I'd worked so hard to get to that position. And it was a real privilege to be in that position, being able to study at Oxford. And So I was 18 months into that program when I got the opportunity to move to San Francisco. And everyone I knew said that's a bad idea. Everyone I knew in the UK was like, what are you thinking? You've got a scholarship, you might lose it, you might lose your place on the course. You're not going to graduate, so you're not going to have this, you know, you're not going to actually going to get the degree. And by the way, I didn't, I never graduated, so I'm technically still on sabbatical. And. But, but the reason it didn't look like a courageous move, as you called it, is that the people I had met with were some of the smartest people I'd ever met. And not only that, but they had so much that I could learn from. They occupied a world that I'd never seen before a way of thinking about businesses that I had never encountered. You got to remember this is like the UK in 2003. So to get exposure to the founders of PayPal and various other amazing companies where they were thinking about business in a way they hadn't seen before in the UK at that time. You had sort of business minded people and then you had perhaps geeks and then you had academics and they weren't merging. So the business people that I had met anyway were very traditional in their thinking and not really thinking that much about using technology. And then here were these folks that this is sort of the now sometimes referred to as the PayPal mafia because there were so many of them that left PayPal and did amazing things. And I could see them thinking about business in a way that was visionary. They were thinking about how to use technology to reach millions of customers very quickly. They were thinking about the scale that businesses could reach, but they were also thinking about the sort of philosophy and social impact and sort of the bigger ideas, you know, sort of bigger thought structures and they were doing all that. And so for me, the opportunity to go work for those people was seemed like a pretty clear asymmetric bet, very limited downside. If I went in three months later, I didn't cut it or they weren't who I thought they were, I just come back and continue. So I kind of made a three month decision that turned into a one year decision which then turned into, you know, 17 years. So. So yeah, I do, like I'd like to think about that concept of, and also just the concept of like trying to work with the smartest people you can access. Right. The fastest way to develop yourself is, is to just be around people that have categories of knowledge that you don't.
- [10:15]
Melina Palmer
Right. Well and like you said, I think being in the, you know, space of whether it was just being in the UK versus, you know, kind of early days of Silicon Valley, right. Like not really sure what's going to be happening, like knowing it's obviously been around in longer but like that era of everything that's happening, you know, in the early 2000s, we're like, Whoa, like it's so different, you know, the way that technology has evolved and you know, being able to save. And like people though, you're studying medieval literature, which feels like the big, the, the most opposite thing. So I feel like I have to at least ask why, why medieval literature? And how do you feel that that background has helped you in the work that you've done?
- [11:06]
Bob Goodson
Well, it'd be easy to say that it hasn't, but. And probably funnier. But the connection for me is that I have been absolutely fascinated with the nature of language, what it is, and its incredible power, my whole life. And I will never tire of how interesting that subject is. It's just endlessly interesting to me. The power of words. I mean, to put it a couple of examples from when I was younger of things that interest me. I read the dictionary as a child, back to back, cover to cover, because I just figured I keep reading things and hitting words that I don't know. And so it's just a hassle to keep going to the dictionary. There can't be that many words. Why don't I just read the dictionary? So I did read the dictionary and read all the etymologies. And so, you know, and then when you read the etymologies, you see, where did the word come from? What did it used to mean? What does it mean now? And these words just, like, float through history. Like, each word is like a little history book in itself, and we have a million words to enjoy in the English language. And so that interested me. And then I was also interested by how when you study philosophy, you realize that sometimes philosophers capture a concept in one sentence that ends up changing the way people think on a massive scale. And it's like, wow, and what is that sentence? That sentence is just an arrangement of words. And yet the impact that flows through history from someone just moving around some letters on a page, it seems so ephemeral and, you know, unsubstantive. And yet what is more significant than shifting the way people think, which is what words do? And so there's like a mystery and a power to that that just fascinated me and drew me in. And so I got interested in this field at the time known as language theory. And the best period to study if you're interested in language theory, is the Medieval period. Because for anyone listening who wants to go down that path, maybe there's one person out there that's listening that says, this sounds interesting to me.
- [13:19]
Melina Palmer
This is what I've been looking for.
- [13:20]
Bob Goodson
I didn't know if that's true. Put it in the comments we want to hear from you. But the idea that, well, why is the Medieval period the best period for study language theory? It's because the print press had not yet been invented. And so once the print press was invented, you had a sort of fixity in language because you had to decide, finally, how are you going to spell that word? What grammatical treatment will you use here? Even the way English was spoken started to be standardized more fully. So the print press was this turning point where the language became a lot more fixed. Prior to the print press, languages so much more complex and interesting. You know, there were a couple of hundred ways to write the word through in English before the print. 200 Ways to Write the word through in English. Right. So just think how complex it is when you're trying to study, you know, a text. And every text is unique because they're handwritten. So the, you know, quirkiness of words, one scribe versus another in how they form, the letters, in how they spell words, it's regionally influenced. So anyway, the texts in that period are wildly more complex than later texts. So if you're interested in what is language, the best language theorists all go to the medieval period. And I went to study with one in particular called Professor Paul Strome, who was at Oxford at the time in the Tolkien professor role. He's now, I think, teaching in New York. But it was for him in particular that I, you know, wanted to get to that period.
- [15:05]
Melina Palmer
That is fascinating in so many ways. And my brain is going through like, okay, I could come up with, like, six ways to spell through. I am. We'll have to all go look it up, right? We'll. We'll see all these different ways that we could even begin to spell through. I don't know how that would happen.
- [15:25]
Bob Goodson
One of the reasons it's so complex is that through includes two runic characters which had dropped out of English, you know, as we Latinised the Alphabet that English uses. So the th and the gh are both runic letters originally, which have been replaced with two letters from the Latin alpha bit. And that whether you choose the runic or the Latin, whether you, you know.
- [15:52]
Melina Palmer
You combine maybe the other. Right?
- [15:55]
Bob Goodson
Yeah, yeah. There's so many ways. It's, It's. It turns out there, there are a couple hundred. But you asked the question of. Of how did that help in my field? And, well, it's led. It led me to be. To be working with. With natural language processing very early from, from 2010, I've been focused on a company called Quid that I founded that was pushing on natural language processing to understand the world's social media data and media data. And we had all this amazing information by 2010, coming through media and social media. But trying to understand it was still very difficult because we didn't have the algorithms to read language. Everything in 2010 was focused on understanding the Numeric information, which is what the big data kind of wave was really all about. It's all numeric information and building machine learning algorithms and such, looking at the numbers. But I was interested in the language. So since 2010, I've been building products with our team that use natural language processing and eventually large language models, because it just seemed obvious to me that when AI and the relevant algorithms could unlock the power of language at scale, we would have this enormous burst of value that would get created. And I've been talking about this publicly since, I mean, the talks online from 2016, for example, where I, I did a talk at Oxford called the 100 year revolution in what It Is to Be Human, which is online and linked from my website, bobgoodson.com and where I talk about the, the explosion of the value that's about to come. And now that's kind of obvious because generative AI provided the key unlock and large language models, rather provided the key unlock. And admitting we've seen kind of a lot of potential stem from that. So, yeah, I think, although it looks obscure, those early studies have sort of actually stayed with me.
- [17:52]
Melina Palmer
Yeah, well, definitely. And I mean, when you said the history of language and the understanding the theory of language and things, I immediately thinking like, well, large language, you know, models that are coming out now and what you're doing it, it's, I think it's really cool where this becomes fortuitous in so many ways. Right? Like you didn't know. It's kind of like serendipitous maybe, but like, you get there and it's like, oh, like, of course this was helpful. The thing that I didn't even realize would matter when I was studying, it feels like so different. And people would say, like, those don't go together at all. And I love, you know, behavioral economics is that same type of a field where people come to me all the time and say, like, oh man, when I went to school, I said I wanted to study psychology and economics, and everybody told me that those two things didn't go together and it made no sense. And you had to pick one because they're, they're opposite. Right? And so people that come into the field that have degrees in engineering or, you know, art and philosophy, like, there's just so many things, but then you realize there's this, you know, the humanness at the core of all of it is so important and being able to see how we behave and think. And I, I was really drawn into so a field I'm really interested in. Have you done much into cognitive semiotics?
- [19:15]
Bob Goodson
No. Tell. Tell me more about your. Your experience of that.
- [19:19]
Melina Palmer
It is. Yeah. It has to do with, like, thinking about thinking the way that we think in the power of metaphor, essentially, and knowing that we, you know, think in metaphor and how that comes into and from this. So saying every 20th to 25th word we say is a metaphor, which is crazy when you think about it, right. But as you look into how that shapes the way that we consider things and how often we unintentionally mix metaphors and how that impacts when you're selling and bringing things together, and so in a way of bringing this to the. The like button. You know, what we're. We're here for, though. This conversation's amazing, and we'll definitely keep going all over the place with it, which I love. I think there, you know, so in the book, you talk about the difference of, like, why the thumbs up versus hearts and knowing that there are some hearts that are around these days and why not, versus a smiley face versus the word like versus something else. Right. So I think that all coming into play so is really, you know, built into that experience and how something that seems so small, like, it's just. It's just the emoji of it. It's just this one little thing. It shouldn't make that big of a difference, but the power behind it can be huge if you pick the right or the wrong one. So as we roll into that conversation feels like, you know, feel free to jump in where I was. And if you want to maybe start back with, like, the idea of the. The like button, like, how it even came about.
- [21:04]
Bob Goodson
Yeah, I'll start. I'll start there. And so much that we can talk about. So the. Yeah, the book is about, you know, it stemmed from this question of, like, who invented the like button? And when I was at Yelp as a product manager, the CTO and co founder Russ came to me one day and said, I think we could make it easier to send a compliment because we had this feature called Send a Compliment, but it took, like, several clicks and you had to write something. And. But it was a very popular feature, but that's generally how you sent messages. At the time, there was no such concept as. As we know it today, of liking these react buttons that you see on content. So he said, I think we can make it simpler. If I use JavaScript, could you just spend the afternoon and come up with some ideas for what it could look like and what words we could use? So I Spent the afternoon doing some research to find the closest parallels I could. And I made notes in my notebook, which is a page from, which is published in the book. So you can see what I scribbled down that day and May 2005, so 20 years ago. And. And there were various ideas that we explored, one of which was just to put the word like that, also put like a thumbs up and a thumbs down. And what we ended up choosing was to put three buttons on the content. Useful, funny. Cool. And so we became the first people to ever put multiple emotions on a piece of web content to be able to react to it, which is now prevalent everywhere in all the apps you use. We were also the first to allow that one click interaction, because until then, every click thing you click to react would take you to another page or would, you know, do a page reload. Which may not seem like a big deal, but at the time, because bandwidth was more limited than it is today, it might take four or five seconds to reload a page and that was enough of an incentive not to click it. Plus, with Yelp, which is a local review site, you would see a page of reviews. And we were conscious that we wanted to let people click multiple reviews if they're reading down the page. And oh, that was useful. That's funny, that's cool. They could scroll down and just click, click, click, click. Whereas if you had to reload the page, it would take you off of that view and take you away from the business and you might only click one thing instead of several. So that's what played out. And then fast forward. You know, I'd been interested in this feature and seeing how it kind of moved through the web because I was, you know, a user interface designer at the time and have still, I've always had a big interest in that field and done, you know, designed other interfaces since I watched this thing just shift over, over, you know, 15 years or so into different forms through different websites and, and kept thought, thinking, someone's going to write the book on this at some point or someone's going to write the definitive article to talk about this feature. So every now and again I would check and no one had written it. And I was kicking around ideas with a good friend of mine and we'd written some things together before Martin Reeves from BCG Henderson Institute. And I mentioned this idea and he was like, hang on a minute, are you saying you invented the light button? And I'm like, no, no, no, that's no. And that's not how it Works, these things evolve. And then he was like, well, who did invent it? And we were like, yeah, good question. And we spent like, we ended up spending the whole day just pulling on that thread and seeing where did it come from. And that's where we really like. And we've been pulling on that thread ever since. That was four years ago. And it turns out that by investigating this, we have uncovered various lessons in the nature of innovation. How things really get built, how things spread, and how things evolve. And one of the dimensions that you've just raised is like, why the thumb? Why the thumbs up? Why did I. I thought about it at the time and put it in the notes, but we didn't choose that one. And for years, it wasn't an obvious choice. And we're talking, you know, three years before Facebook added a like button. So there's. There was a long evolution before Facebook added it. Most people will think of Facebook as the inventor of the like button because that's. They were the ones who popularized it, I think, and took it to another level. But for several years, sites were choosing. Some were choosing thumbs up and down, some just the thumbs up. But many were just not even using a symbol. Friend feed had a smiley face, and they considered using a heart, which we found out when we interviewed the founders, but they moved away from a heart because no one was really using that at the time. And I think YouTube's first, you know, icon was a heart. And so there was sort of. It wasn't obvious you would use the thumb. But over time, what happens is people try different things, users react. Sometimes those things are successful and they spread, and other times they kind of have some friction in them and they drop out. And over time, there's sort of a consensus of interface that evolves. And now you look at it and it's actually pretty similar across the web and across all the apps that you use. There are sort of usually a series of maybe five options by default, and then you have like a whole series of emojis. But even as recently as a few months ago, Apple still hadn't converted over to that model for imessaging. So you, I mean, you may. Your listeners may remember there were only like five options or something. And. And they didn't have the option to put other kinds of emotions on it. So, you know, it can take a long time. These things take a long time to evolve. But it's all about. Everyone watches each other and kind of follows. And what tuned in as the ultimate icon was just the word like. And the thumb. And we, yeah, as you. As you read we went on a big exploration say like, why the word? Like why the thumb? What is it so magical about the thumb for people.
- [26:35]
Melina Palmer
Yeah, yeah. And so for everyone, of course. I'm sure then that you know, the history getting to go back to the Coliseum and as we learn about how this worked for gladiators or didn't, I guess in that sense as well can learn, you know, more about that history of the, you know, the thumb. And just even as we think about something, you know, the difference between the like and. And a heart to say where it's like, do I do I love it? Like, would I say that I love the thing you even look at to where it's stars versus hearts. As we get into these other aspects of like would I give you a five star review faster than I would say, oh, I give you five hearts because I loved it so much. It feels very different and even for me. And I'm like a glittery monster. I, you know, I'm all about, I guess rainbows and sparkles. I don't know, maybe not quite that much. My daughter's like unicorn nightlight is charging in my office. So I feel like the energy is flowing at the moment. But like, you know, there are a lot of people that would never want to click a heart and definitely not to give multiples on things. And so whereas a like is like, yeah, like I'll give you a little, little something right. I can, I can say something here and knowing to just even. And the book definitely goes into depth about how we can understand the like it's easy to give a little bit of that versus a full comment and sharing and things. I do want to talk a little bit about the economics of the like button. Like what that has allowed to happen for business, for brands and like say the. It changed everything like in so many ways. I. I actually just had a conversation with someone about how it was hard to put advertising dollars into social media at first because it was like, well, we know the return on TV and billboards and print, which is like, no you don't. Like, you thought you knew but like now that social has so much tracking behind the scenes, you know, makes it so those other things are really hard to prove ROI on. So it's interesting how that all shifts. But just, you know, if you can share a little bit about kind of how that changed the face of, you know, for business and the, you know, economies that have really like built up around the power behind that like button.
- [29:16]
Bob Goodson
Yeah, One of the things we sort of explore as an implication and I didn't expect going into researching the book, but has came through pretty clearly as we peeled back the layers and as we spoke to more people, is that it turns out that having such a popular user interface convention that people got used to initially in a social media environment where they were liking photos by, you know, their friends uploaded and things like that, but it conditioned us to get to, I think, conditioned consumers to bring down the barrier of giving feedback. And so because that's, it's a kind of feedback mechanism, it's also the atomic unit of user generated content. So there's nothing, still nothing similar to the state as a way of creating content than clicking a reaction to something. You're putting your name on it, you are connecting yourself to something, you're connecting a graph behind the scenes to other people. And so people don't think of it as the kinds of user generated content, but it, but it certainly is. And so as this feature became more popular, I think it actually greased the wheels for the customer experience movement. So customer experience was coming up around the same time and exists to understand, you know, what is a user, what is a customer likely to do next or what do they need next in their journey. Right. And so collecting data on the customer's journey so far and then being able to predict like, what do they need next from, from, from the company. And so being able to get feedback to improve services and improve customer experience became very valuable and sort of a critical part of the rise of customer experience as a field. And it was a very successful field. I mean, you take any way that you want to measure customer experience over the past 20 years and it has improved across the board, like whether you're talking restaurants, whether you're talking online experiences, online shopping, you know, real world experiences, hotels, airports and so on. There really has been a meaningful impact by customer experience in improving what we get to experience. And, and so, but so much of it is clicking that survey link, you know, rating the experience. And we, we propose that the popularity of the like button brought down the barrier to people interacting with that kind of content and opened the door for customer experience to, you know, collect more reactions from people for sure.
- [32:01]
Melina Palmer
And then, you know, knowing like the, you talk in the book about the, you know, influencers and micro influencers and how it opened up this whole other career option for people, I guess, and like understanding for, for marketing teams too, where there's you know, of course, celebrity type endorsements, but you know, there's the you know, the value that comes from the likes, you know, for people being able to get likes on their, their content and, and what that has done for just brands all across the world.
- [32:37]
Bob Goodson
Yeah, we, we explore in a chapter called the Business of, of Likes, we were sort of trying to answer this question like, what is a like worth? If you had to put like a, a dollar amount on a like, like what what would you put on it? So we took various angles over time to try and understand that question. And it is, it's the question that's interesting. More, more than trying to come to any, any exact answer. But, but it led us down the path of seeing all the ways in which liking had contributed to the rise of various industries. The most notable being social media itself. But the changes in the way people advertise ties as sort of underlying the real value of social, social media from a, you know, market cap standpoint and, but then also opening up all of these careers and different category of work in, in the influence space which you know, there are, there are many metrics that matter in influence. Of course, it's it's number of followers which is a concept that Twitter helped invent and popularize. And we interviewed Biz Stone, one of the co founders of Twitter in, in the book and, and he talks about how that concept came about. And so with Twitter it was more about the follow concept than liking. They really need like concept because you could just follow instead. But yeah, followers and also attention just straight up views plays if they're video content and so on. So number of important metrics. But liking is one of the most obvious and tangible ones that an advertiser or a, you know, someone paying for influence can get behind because it does require the person viewing it to take a specific action and give their emotional response to the content. So it's, it's, there's something more tangible about it I guess for people that are looking to gain and measure influence.
- [34:24]
Melina Palmer
Definitely. And so as we think about, you talked about customer experience, you know, a little bit there. And knowing that though going forward you're not using that term anymore in your company. So if it's not customer experience, what's next?
- [34:41]
Bob Goodson
Thank you. So we talk about customer context as an evolution of customer experience. It doesn't replace customer experience because that's very successful and has its place understanding what the individual customer needs next. What I've observed over the years, and it's what Quid focuses on is that there's a gap for brands to understand the context the customer's Operating in, because customer experience doesn't provide that. Customer experience provides us with a rear view mirror to see what has just happened. And based on what's just happened, the specific actions of the individuals, what might they need next? Right. And it's all about sort of hyper targeting and learning and feedback loops and so on. It's completely unaware of the context the customer is operating in. Meaning social, political, environmental, economic. Right. These, all these factors are becoming increasingly important in the way consumers make decisions, in the way they connect with brands, in the way they connect with their retail experiences. And, and yet, you know, other than quid, there isn't a company or at the moment focused around how to in a scientific way gather all of this information, whether it's in social media, media and, and tangibly deliver the context that brands need and retailers need to make decisions. So we've been, that's what we've, that's what we've built and that's what we deliver to about 400 brands and retailers now.
- [36:15]
Melina Palmer
Yeah, that's awesome. And as I mentioned to you going into this, I talk about context and how important it is all the time on the show and in my books and everything. And as you look at this, the, you know, the context being like there's so many different angles like you were saying, like where is this person in the journey outside of what they're just doing with us and what we can track. Right. There's also like what else is going on in their life? And knowing we shift through different identities throughout the day, like am I in mom mode or podcaster mode or whatever else in this moment when you're looking to interact with me? So something's going to be more likely to resonate right now versus 20 minutes from now and being able to understand that context, you know, there's so, and that's like this much of a context opportunity that exists. And so I guess a question that I would have with that is as it, does it have to be so specific? So it's like this is how customer 1,275,652 or whatever of yours is and what they need. It's like that very, very, you know, specialized, targeted to, to the individual. Or are you able to use that to create just more specific niche segments that have like groupings based on that, like psychographic and demographic data kind of. And like. Or in between kind of. What does that look like?
- [37:46]
Bob Goodson
Yeah, thanks for clarifying because an important distinction is that we don't manage personally identifiable information. So that was A decision we made structurally. I think you got, you got two ways to go into that space. You can either be in the PII world where it's really about Molina and specifically like specific to you. But we just felt that there were so many companies already providing things that are targeting an individual level. What was missing and what we provide is broader context of the social, political, environmental, fashion trends, esthetic trends, you know, health trends. You know, we are looking at a more aggregate level and we have audience analysis capabilities where we can then you know, tune into particular subsets of an audience for brands, which is necessary and useful, but that's at the audience and segmentation level. It's never down to the individual level. So we don't collect anything that allows us to know that it's you. Now we manage public information. So if you post on X and you're publicly visible then, then, and you've permitted it in your, you know, your settings that your posts are public, then we will collect it. You know, same as if you talk on Reddit and other forums like we, we collect the publicly expressed opinions and, and content through, you know, all of the big social media platforms and all of the world's media content through our partners and as well as podcast data and other forms where people are talking publicly. And by applying large language models to this content, we can detect and extract all kinds of interesting patterns. There's a predictive element to it as well. So we can say this summer, here's what's going to be interesting to people, here's what they're gravitating towards. We can say that at the time of recording, we're in April, but we can look ahead and we are and we do tell brands and retailers here's what's going to be big this summer. And so there's a wealth of information and we, yeah, that's, that's the, it's, you could think of it more at the aggregate level is, is where we, we deliver the insights.
- [40:04]
Melina Palmer
That's, that's cool. I'm, I am refraining from asking all of the follow up questions that I have. We'll have, we'll have future conversations I'm sure as we go to wrap up the conversation. What else would you want people to do know as far as about the, you know, the like button, the book, any kind of last thoughts that you think are really key for people?
- [40:28]
Bob Goodson
I think that the, one of the reasons it's, it's useful, I think the, the, the, the, the book is and what we're hearing from people is that it's helping people understand how technology really gets developed and. And therefore, or we think that a better understanding of that is good for people to make individual choices about how to use or not use new technologies, as well as for the purposes of regulation and protecting people against the unintended consequences, negative consequences of new technologies. And we do it through the lens of social media. But it's the same forces and often the same people and the same investors and the same mechanisms that are now driving generative AI and will drive the next wave of technology. And so really we're kind of using a deep and very kind of specific understanding of this button, a whole book about the invention of this thing, because we think the lessons in it are valuable in understanding tech in general, understanding how Silicon Valley really works. And yeah, that's one of the reasons we're hearing from people that they find it a useful read.
- [41:45]
Melina Palmer
Oh, for sure. Well, I'm really glad that you brought that up. And one of the things I really liked in the book too, is even just to go from the phrasing of calling it an unintended consequence to unconsidered consequences. I think is the language that's in the book there. And I think that was used a phrasing from someone else who has used that. That term. But that just goes to show like, it's not that it was. Wasn't our intention. Like we didn't even think about it. I mean, it's just a very different thing to be able to in the way we think about accountability and that you should. What are you responsible for considering versus like. Yeah, so I think there's just a lot again to the language of all of that and understanding the different words. And I really appreciated in the book as well that you talk about kind of the balance of. There's so many great things that came from the like button. But then there's as we think about how, you know, reactions to dopamine and different ways that people have their identities tied in like buttons and how this has shaped the like way that it's working throughout society. Like showing, you know, both the dark and the light, the balance of that from everything, I think was a really valuable perspective that everyone can read and learn more about when they get their copies of like. So to help them do that, we'll of course have links in the show notes. But from your perspective, you know, what's the best way for everyone who's excited to follow you to learn more to get the book? You know, where should they go.
- [43:16]
Bob Goodson
Thanks Melina. We have a website, likebook.org where you can learn more, see the latest reviews and links to all your favorite bookstores where you can find the book and and we and if anyone would like to follow me, I am on LinkedIn and you can find me as Bob Goodson Perfect.
- [43:35]
Melina Palmer
And we will of course put that link in the show notes to make it easy. So thanks again Bob for joining me. I very much enjoyed this conversation. Two thumbs up.
- [43:45]
Bob Goodson
Thanks. Thanks Melina.
- [43:48]
Melina Palmer
So what got your brain buzzing as you learned about the like button today? For me, I love the reminder that even small design choices like picking a thumbs up instead of a heart can have a massive impact on human behavior. It's also so important to think about how technology evolves organically over time and how something that's so obvious that it feels like it must have been intentional at its inception wasn't necessarily the case. That can hopefully alleviate some of the pressure you might feel to create something perfect that you know will take off before you launch. Often, testing, iterating and trying things out is the best process. I also love talking about how our brains are wired to pick up and share emotional signals without needing a lot of words, and that ironically, a background in linguistics and literature can actually make it easier to lean into those metaphors that are going to resonate. The blend of behavioral science, innovation, and human history in this conversation was such a delight. I also really appreciated Bob's perspective on the difference between customer experience and customer context. You've heard me talk about context a lot here on the show and in my books, and I couldn't agree more. It's not just about what a customer is doing, but everything else happening around them when they make a decision. Now if you could invent any button on the Internet, what would it be? I'd love to hear your ideas. Come share them with me on social media. You you'll find me as the Brainy Biz pretty much everywhere and as Melina Palmer on LinkedIn. There are links in the show notes to make it easy as well as for my top related past episodes and books, including Like Ways to Get in Touch with Bob and Myself and more. It's all waiting for you in the app you're listening to and@the brainybusiness.com 505 and just like that, episode 505 with Bob Goodson about the story of the like button is done. Join me Tuesday for another brainy episode of the Brainy Business podcast. It's going to be a lot of fun. You don't want to miss it. Until then, thanks again for listening and learning with me, and remember to be thoughtful.
- [46:00]
Bob Goodson
Thank you for listening to the Brainy Business Podcast. Melina offers virtual strategy sessions, workshops and other services to help businesses be more brain friendly. For more free resources, visit thebrainybusiness.com.