Likes are not meant to be a currency at all, it's meant to be an engagement tool with minimal friction. It's not about ranking anything, it's about making it so

Likes are not meant to be a currency at all, it's meant to be an engagement tool with minimal friction. It's not about ranking anything, it's about making it so easy to say "check out this cool thing I found" that anyone can do it. Anecdotally, I used to surf the internet a lot in high school in the late 90's/early 00's and not a ton of my friends were online, so there wasn't much shared link wise among us. Then, in college, there was a group forum that a bunch of us were a part of and one of the more popular parts of it were the links people posted. Then, after college digg, Facebook, reddit, pintrest and twitter all found a place amongst the population at large for sharing things. I guess for most people sharing is not about currency or ranking at all, it's about sharing something interesting. It's more akin to telling a friend about music that you like, a book that you are reading, or a newspaper article you thought was insightful. When you think of those things, it is rarely about ranking them, it is almost always about sharing. People share with other people because it makes their life better or their friends' lives better. They do it because they care about their friends, not because they care about you or what you created.