Facebook jacket hugs you when you receive a Like

Some crafty MIT students have developed a wearable extension to your social media existence that translates every virtual Facebook "like" into an actual hug. They have turned that meagre pixelated thumbs-up into a full-body squeeze, The Guardian reports.

The Like-A-Hug project is a "wearable social media vest", developed by Melissa Kit Chow in collaboration with Andy Payne and Phil Seaton, as part of the MIT Media Lab's Tangible Media Group.

The vest, which looks like a slinky black bodywarmer, is designed to inflate like a lifejacket when friends "like" a photo, video, or status update on the wearer's Facebook wall, "thereby allowing us to feel the warmth, encouragement, support, or love that we feel when we receive hugs," says Chow.

But hugs are of course a two-way thing, so the designers have developed a mechanism by which the hug can be sent back to the sender by squeezing the garment, deflating it in the process.