The most prominent social button is the "like". The social networking site Facebook intro-duced this feature within its platform in February 2009. In social media, the participatory and collaborative version of the web, liking is a so-called predefined communicative act (just as sharing and as opposed to comments which can be written by the users in a non-given way). The authors of the paper The Like Economy, Anne Helmond and Carolin Gerlitz remark: "The Like is always a collective. It is more than +1." And why are likes relevant for the economy? Because they "allow the instant transformation of user engagement into numbers on button counters, which can be traded and multiplied but also function as tracking devices" (Gerlitz−Helmond 2013: 1348). Through the recommendation and like culture the interactions of users with contents and each other (otherwise: the practices of everyday life, including the consumption of goods and information) became part of databases. "Using social media [...] may require new ways of thinking" (Kaplan–Haenlein 2010: 67). The proposed talk tries to answer the following questions: How to turn likes into revenue? Is it worth buying page and post likes? Is there any distinction between good and bad likes (cf. public customer service on social media sites)? If so, what makes a(n economically) good like? In other words: What can be the economic value of likes?

References
Gerlitz, Carolin – Helmond, Anne 2013: The like economy: Social buttons and the data-intensive web. New Media & Society 15/8:1348−1365.
Kaplan, Andreas M. – Haenlein, Michael 2010: Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media. Business Horizons 53: 59−68.