How to get more likes on Facebook

For the answer—and damn you if you don't already know it—check out The Oatmeal's fantastic strip explaining it. [via Waxy]

• [Rider]

  Not sure what exactly causes it, but Dangerous Minds tries to load so much crap now that it takes 2-3 minutes to load the damn pages.

  • [Phoc Yu]

    Someone sent me a link to something on deadspin.  The amount of elements it tried to load that were blocked by NoScript ended up with my laptop’s temp rising by almost 30°F in less than 2 minutes.

• [GawainLavers]

  “You wouldn’t do this in the real world:

  ‘Hey, I’m trying to be a better person and become more likable.  Would you mind going around and telling everyone how great I am?’”

  The Oatmeal is clearly not written by someone who’s ever lived in the US.

  • [PNWchemist]

    I am pretty sure he lives in Seattle Washington, It’s really just better here (Washington) than it is  in the rest of the country… 

  • [jnordb]

    He does live here in Seattle. My son and I met him at ECCC a few weekends ago; he drew two pictures for my kid. He was super nice, and when he was at his booth the line to meet him was fairly long (at least much longer than any of the other artist booths that I saw.)

• [Christopher]

  Somehow putting my “energy into making things that are likeable, not into some douchey media strategy” has been my strategy for some time now. And if people don’t like the things I make, well…

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzlCdWwYn2I

• [Pip_R_Lagenta]

  I have YouTube channel that has six hundred videos of a guy playing an electric ukulele.  I can’t understand why it’s not more popular.

  • [Christopher]

    Maybe I’m missing something but I’d call 296 subscribers fairly popular.

• [ObeyMyBrain]

  According to this guy, George Washington is too busy fighting zombies to take on Skynet at the moment.

  http://sharpwriter.deviantart.com/gallery/#/d3blw90

  • [retepslluerb]

    More to te point, George Washington riding a bald eagle and defeating Skynet wouldn’t be a portrait. It CANNOT BE DONE!

• [James B]

  I tried to like the blog for my Facebook, but couldn’t find the button.

• [MrEricSir]

  Or to put it another way, “You can’t force a meme.”

  • [Antinous / Moderator]

    Oh, yeah? Just look at it.

    • [flosofl]

      And aren’t you a smart banana?

• [Andrea Karim]

  Carbon-based Sausage Monster is going to have to be the middle name of my first child. It’s a mouthful, sure, but we’ll just try to think of it as a Portugese name.

• [Phoc Yu]

  I never really appreciated how cluttered and obnoxious the web browsing experience on almost any page (present company included) has gotten without the various blocking extensions until I was surfing on a computer that only had IE and was blocked from my RSS feeds.

  Also, I’d be happy to contribute to a BB “pass the hat” event, but I find I need to block all the ads, all 26 (currently!) 3rd-party scripts on the main page, and the sidebar to make BB load and scroll OK on my 4 year old machine, no matter the browser.

  • [EvilTerran]

    Yeah, my NoScript menu’s twice the height of my screen for BB, which is more than pretty much any other site I’ve looked at it on. I don’t recognise a lot of them, but some cursory searching suggests the 19(!) script sources break down into:

    content (4): BB.net, disqus, fmpub, youtube

    adverts (6): mediaplex, bizographics, contextly, admob, lijit.com, doubleclick

    analytics (3): scorecardresearch, google-analytics, quantserve

    social networks (3): twitter, pinterest, facebook

    frameworks(?) (3): googleapis, typekit, google

    More than necessary, shurely?

• [Jim Saul]

  To be fair, it looks much better now that I added sparkles and javascript snow. 

  And I think the autorun music is quite uplifting, though not everyone seems to find Ween as soothing as I do.

• [Vincenzo Ravina]

   The Oatmeal is right about it being a bad idea to send out Facebook messages begging for people to like your thing. Handwritten letters delivered by post are more personal. Add a spritz of your favourite scent for an added touch.

• [Andrew Singleton]

  Is it a bad thing I’ve seen sites like that?

• [robuluz]

  I read an article recently citing evidence that having facebook and social media icons on a page significantly effects user behaviour, even if they don’t link anywhere.

  Apparently there is a sense that your actions on the site are somehow shared with your online community, and if you are looking at a product that you’d be happy for people to know you are buying, you are around 25% more likely to purchase with icons present than without. If its an ointment for an embarrasing rash you are about 25% less likely.

  So while it would be nice if everyone just created mind blowing artwork that was deserving of praise by their peers, you can rest assurred that crappy marketing strategies will pad out the bulk of social media for some time to come.