What the Like Button Can Teach Us About Innovation

In 2022 one of us (Bob) was going through the onerous process of moving from one house to another when he stumbled upon an old sketch in his files. It depicted a prototype for a thumbs-up like button, made when Bob was the first employee at the review site Yelp. Today the like button can be found everywhere on the internet. It has transformed digital advertising and marketing and helped fuel the growth of the $250 billion social media industry. Most people assume it was invented by Facebook, the firm that first used it at scale. But intriguingly, the date on the sketch (May 18, 2005) preceded the adoption of the like button at Facebook by nearly four years.