Why Facebook Likes are not replacing Links anytime soon…
- A look past the hype, and why Facebook should buy Digg, Reddit, and other Tier 2 Search Aggregators to compete with Google.

1) You cannot reference a "Like" in a blog post; if you want to give credit to a blogger or a website the most efficient way is to link to them (or vote for them).

Solution: The entire web moves into Facebook (ha). Since this isn't plausible bloggers and forums will continue to link to external websites.

2) "Links" represent the total sum of the web, including foreign countries. "Likes" represent a walled garden (albeit huge), that don't take into account the masses. In fact, there can be infinite duplicate stories floating around Facebook at any one time, all with their own amount of likes, but you will only ever see your friends. (How many times have you seen different circles of friends posting the same stories?) Linking helps give credit to the original source more often than not and less duplication. Imagine if the algorithm (Google) only took into account a very small amount of back links (from your friends)...it wouldn't scale properly, and that's the inherent problem with Likes.

Solution: Facebook becomes completely open, more like Buzz or Twitter. I see great synergies with Digg, where there can only be ONE (highlander?) unique story on the network that can be voted on by the masses, and your friends, with the ability to filter by Friends and/or Everyone. Currently you are only leveraging a couple hundred to 5000 people at best to decide what's the best refrigerator to buy. With one allowance of a unique story on the network we would get an amazing picture of what was really "Liked" and what wasn't relevant, with the added option of filtering by friends if you wanted to drill down. Even Buzz should take this approach as seeing 55 conversations over 25 identical stories disrupts the social mass leverage appeal.

3) Relevancy - When you link to a webpage you can specify the anchor text (click here, etc). This allows SE's to understand what the page is about and variations of it. Without this ability there would be only strict adherence to relevancy. This is why Facebook search within Facebook is extremely ONPage driven with Titles. There is virtually no other factors that allow you to outrank someone else with a similar Fan Page title (other than Like volume). Variations on words is lost, and the algorithm only knows you Liked Blue Suede shoes, but doesn't recognize other people labeled it as Suede Shoes that are Blue.

Solution: Adding tags when people like something. Perhaps a box that says why did you like this? or Tag this story, i.e. funny, clever, scary, news, seo, business, games, etc. This then allows the simplicity of Likes, while giving more variation relevancy to a story, freeing it from the pigeon hole of the Title.

4) How they position themselves; notice the language. Bing is “utilizing” Facebook to understand social search. Or Google “pulls” Twitter into their algorithm (Caffeine). This is because these networks are part of a bigger whole, Tier 1 Search Engines and for reasons (1) mainly, can never give a complete picture of what everyone is talking about.

By the basic structure of the web, Google will win
Tier 1 – Overall general Search Engine, aggregates anything and everything {Google, Bing, Yahoo,}

Tier 2- Sites that aggregate “niche” content and drill down deeper than Tier 1, but still cannot stand alone due to the complexity of human beings and the want to search outside certain niches at all times. {Digg, Reddit, GameFriends, etc}

Tier 3 – Content Creators – This level keeps the internet going with fresh blogs, forums, images and videos {AOL, NJ.com, Yahoo Answers, etc}

Where does Facebook best reside currently? It’s a hybrid of Tier 2,3,1 in order of importance. Content creation is down on social sites, while “social sharing” is actually up. In order to free itself from the Tier 2 and 3 stage they need to get open, WIDE OPEN, allow one unique story per network, and leverage the 500 million users to all “Like” a story, adding tags to the reasons they liked it. In its current state Facebook is stuck in Tier 2, but isn’t playing fair with Tier 1 (by remaining a walled garden unlike Twitter which knows it’s role), and is seen as a pseudo competitor to any of the Tier 1’s. Without the above solutions I’m afraid your Likes will never replace Links, but they sure are fun to get, and have their pecking order in the Online Marketing space.