Facebook Launches New Like Button Updates For Developers

[engine]

Facebook Launches New Like Button Updates For Developers [developers.facebook.com]

Today, we’re officially launching three new updates for the Like button:

•The ability to like canvas URLs for Facebook applications that represent things such as a cause, movie, or any other real world object
•The ability to link a Like button to a Facebook Page
•“Box count” layout that displays the total number of likes above the button

[whoisgregg]

Enabling the Like button for Facebook Pages

Hmm, I've been using that feature for a couple weeks now. Non-announcement?

[Pfui]

Concerns about the button's privacy issues are not new. From the June, 2010, CNET article linked below. Emphasis mine:

"[W]idespread use of the Like button allows Facebook to track people as they switch from CNN.com to Yelp.com to ESPN.com, all of which are sites that have said they will implement the feature.

"Even if someone is not a Facebook user or is not logged in, Facebook's social plug-ins collect the address of the Web page being visited and the Internet address of the visitor as soon as the page is loaded--clicking on the Like button is not required. If enough sites participate, that permits Facebook to assemble a vast amount of data about Internet users' browsing habits. ..."

Source: Facebook 'Like' button draws privacy scrutiny by Declan McCullagh [news.cnet.com...]

Sounds akin to a distributed Google Analytics tag -- for Facebook's benefit.

[freejung]

I implemented the like button very early on. In the first version of their code generator widget, they had three options for the colors: "light," "dark," and "evil."

I picked "evil" (which looked exactly like dark) because I thought it was hilarious.

Facebook has essentially announced that they fully intend to be as evil as possible, and what are you going to do about it?

I sure hope these revisions fix some of the issues we've seen with the like button, it's been a real PITA.

[Hugene]

they had three options for the colors: "light," "dark," and "evil."

This is just too funny.

Putting theLike button is like (too much like) giving all your stats to FB in return for, well, nothing, and you just drive traffic to them. For thepaltry 3 people that like your article and the 0.5 click-through you get from these 3 likes.

Yet everyone has done it. Why? The sheep effect I guess.

However, if things keep going this way (they do) in 5 years my site will look like an old Egyptian papyrus scroll, devoid of all fancy social plugins.