Daniel Jomphe's dashboard

You raise some kind of issue, I guess:

- like is about the author: thanking him
- shared is about one's followers: showing them

You're right that the author should also be interested in shares, so that:

- like would be about the author
- shared would be about both one's followers and the post's author.

I guess this could be succinctly described as a wish for the following improvement: "X people liked/shared this".

And if we go deeper into this, we may also add that likes should also be about ourselves, just as much as shared items are also about ourselves: remembering in the future what we liked/shared. But that's already covered by another topic on this site: Liked items search (please vote for it!).

My personal answer:

I share what I want others to see. Of course, I like all I share.
I don't share all that I like. I don't want to bury my friends under lots of noise.
I star what I want to act upon later.

Prior to being able to like posts, I was obliged to share everything I liked.

Another point of view: it's a nice way of saying thank you, especially since the author of a very liked post wouldn't have known about it if his post had only been shared by multiple persons.

That's right. I don't want to lose what I like(d)!

That said, "Like"s are definitely what I needed between Starred and Shared, thank you Googlers!!