Social media sharing was simple back then. It works on a consume-first-share-later model: content providers gave out content for free, and consumers shared said content, if they deemed it worthy of sharing. These days, there seems to be another increasingly popular model, what we call the share-first-consume-later model. Facebook Likes and even tweets are now increasingly used as de facto currency on some content platforms.

In fact, this model is becoming mainstream. TechCrunch recently instituted tweets as a way for their readers to participate in a contest. Effectively, readers are offering tweets as a bribe to gain access to the contest, with TechCrunch merely giving an invitation to treat. Of course, legal technicalities aside, this is a model to which we subscribe, for we also make consumers click on Facebook Like buttons to participate in deals.

The other way of seeing it is that it is the businesses who are bribing consumers with valuable things to get them to Like something, a view adopted by author Nicholas Carr. In illustrating the absurdity of the social media bribery model with a personal analogy, he said, “Back in elementary school, there was this distinctly unlikable kid who, if you agreed to act like his friend for a day, would let you swim in his family's swimming pool.” Perhaps we can all read about his petty musings here and see if he knows what he is talking about.