Facebook Like + Facebook Share Button Changes = Win!

Facebook Creates
Hybrid Button!

There’s a little confusion about Facebook’s announcement regarding changes to their like button… but what it spells is win!

A big problem bloggers have faced is the need to have TWO Facebook buttons – the like button and the share button – for different purposes on their blog… and the realization that most visitors will only use one of them.

Fortunately though when the “like button” was introduced it quickly became obvious that the “like button” and the “share button” were sharing counters. This lead to a lot of speculation that Facebook recently proved was correct.

Facebook has announced that they are changing the way the like button works so that after an individual clicks like they will have a blurb on their wall that looks similar to the share button…with thumbnail, meta description, title and link. This is VERY powerful!

What is different is that it does not appear that the individual can write a custom message to go with the submission which will still say “So and so likes a link from so and so” when they click the like button.

This all goes hand in hand with the increase in site exposure that comes with the new comment box script/plugin.

This does mean that visitors can no longer like something and have it make only a single line entry in their profile – but it’s a massive increase in exposure for the site. Now the like button is “essentially” the share button.

This is supposed to already be in place, but I have seen it affecting my existing like button that I have embedded using their script code and I have not yet seen it impacting most of the plugin based like buttons so it is obviously still slowly being released.

Facebook has indicated that this is a “test” but due to the wide spread nature of the rollout and the type of announcement it is unlikely that this is going to be reverted as it is something we have anticipated for a while.

Will this impact your willingness to click on the like button? How do you feel this will impact your site traffic?

Kimberly Castleberry
Your Partner In Online Success

PS: At the moment, liking things via our page still does not seem fixed.