How I lived for a week without likes on VKontakte

Director of Growth and Research of the company Andrey Zakonov explained that likes and reposts are perceived by users as a measure of the quality of content, although they were originally created for communication between the author and subscribers. He told TJournal that it is incorrect to rate posts only by the number of likes. It is important to correlate this indicator with the number of subscribers and the time during which the post collected reactions. The author and the content are equally important. On them, "VKontakte" and focuses attention, removing the counters.

The innovation is being tested on a test group of users. A life hacker found one of them and asked what a week had been without likes.

How to live without likes

A week ago I opened the VKontakte application, and it immediately struck my eyes: under the post of the thematic group, in which I am a member, there is not a single like. For this community, this is unusual, so I was surprised. It turned out that if you open a post, you can see both the likes and comments.

I did not immediately begin to find out what happened. First, I uploaded the information to a group of SMM specialists. Already from there it spread in a wave over the Internet, reached the media, and the situation cleared up.

I took the changes calmly. VKontakte periodically tests innovations, and here you have to be prepared for any surprise. Moreover, Instagram has recently also begun to introduce the abandonment of likes.

I don’t know what will happen next. The likes counter is still not working: statistics are visible only when you go to a post. I did not specify whether everything will be returned as it was. The VKontakte administration has the right to introduce innovations; their work cannot depend on my whims. In addition, I do not see the full scale and can only express my opinion.

What happened to the tape

The feed began to look different - more like news. There are no distractions, you don’t look at who liked, if there are acquaintances among them, you don’t really see the comments. So the gaze is less distracted from the post itself.

I can't say that because of this I began to spend more or less time on the social network - I periodically go there and so. This also did not affect my user behavior. For example, I read several thematic groups about marketing and SMM, put likes on the machine. I don't care if the number is displayed or not. Thanks to the reaction of users, the post rises in the feed, and I want other people to be able to see interesting materials.

Like - thanks to the creators, because there are not so many sensible groups.

I am an SMM specialist, I lead about 10 groups with a total audience of more than 100 thousand people (from 1 thousand to 60 thousand subscribers). I also have several projects of my own, from which I started as a hobby. The number of likes is one of the tools for measuring the effectiveness of my work. Here, the innovation has changed nothing. You can see how many times a post has been liked when you go to it, the analytics tools are still the same. Customers haven't noticed anything yet, as the new feature is being tested on a limited number of people. But what will happen if the counters are removed for the entire social network, it's hard to say.

Do I need likes

People who are engaged in SMM, in one way or another, will motivate subscribers to likes and comments, otherwise the smart feed will cut the reach. It is not easy with this even now. Whatever group you take, posts are seen by about 5% of its users - only 500 people out of 10 thousand subscribers. And you need to spend time and money to show publications to those who were already attracted for money earlier.

Therefore, a lot of effort is put into working with smart feeds, and increasing the number of likes and comments is an integral part. Otherwise, it is pointless work: everything will come down to the fact that you have to pay VKontakte for every movement.

The number of likes matters.

You publish content and in any case expect some kind of reaction to it. Without this, it is not clear whether people like what you do. If you do not have feedback from users, then in a month or a year you will get tired of doing it. Feedback, on the other hand, motivates you to keep working.

Now "VKontakte" does not offer an alternative way to evaluate whether subscribers like something or not. My work is connected with social networks, I need to see the reaction. Likes and comments allow me to keep track of whether I'm making the right content. Without them, I can constantly publish posts that do not come, and this will ultimately have a bad effect on audience loyalty.

Old subscribers are accustomed to interacting with posts, it will be much more difficult to get a reaction from new ones. And this will affect the position of the posts - here we again return to the smart feed.

Whatever VKontakte says, likes are an indicator of the quality of your work.