When you press that all-important “like” button on a link from Facebook, you’re essentially casting your own personal vote for whatever article, photo, or random website you found enjoyable in some way. But what exactly happens to all those likes? It’s not as though those countless clicks can be revisited, right?
A Portuguese company called ColorElephant is changing that with an ambitious Web app called LikeManager.
LikeManager functions as a massive archive of your every piece of content you’ve liked on Facebook, allowing you to take a trip down memory lane and revisit things that made you smile, even if it happened several years ago. All you need is a Facebook account to login to the site, but you’ll need to cough up a few bucks to get the full experience.
A free account lets you browse a few handfuls of you most recent likes, while a premium account—starting at around $10 for six months—offers access to all of your past likes. Depending on how long you’ve had Facebook and how much you care about it in general, it’s a relatively small price to pay for heaps and heaps of nostalgia.
It’s fairly easy to lose a few hours re-watching old YouTube videos you once adored or reading a particularly gripping article that has long since left your memory, but what you may not be prepared for is the amount of dead links that now litter your Facebook history. Any changes in a site’s URL will cause one of your past likes to show up as “Non-Existent Domain,” which is a bit of a bummer if you’re looking to hunt down a specific site or video.
After taking the site for a spin and upgrading to get the big picture, I found quite a bit of joy in exploring my likes of years past. Unfortunately, after spending some time in a haze of pleasant nostalgia, I’m now essentially “done.” I can’t imagine I’ll want to do this again anytime soon, which makes the idea of a subscription fee seem a bit silly. Still, I’m sure in another five years I’ll once again have a great time looking backwards, if only for an afternoon.
Photo via OwenWBrown/Flickr (CC BY 2.0)