Facebook “Like”

Remember the days of becoming a “fan” on Facebook? As part of their new Open Graph protocol, Facebook has replaced the “Become a Fan” button to “Like,” and no, it’s not just a change for the sake of syntax. In an effort to increase social awareness, sites employing the like button can track the amount of “likes” or approvals in a similar fashion as you would see if someone likes a status update, comment, or photo. Leah Pearlman, a product manager at Facebook blogs:

This is similar to how you might rate a restaurant on a reviews site. If you go to the restaurant and have a great time, you may want to rate it 5 stars. But if you had a particularly delicious dish there and want to rave about it, you can write a review detailing what you liked about the restaurant. We think of the new “Like” feature to be the stars, and the comments to be the review.

Implementation has flourished. According to Facebook’s Developer Blog, more than 50,000 sites have implemented the “like” button as well as other social plugins in a week after launch.