Facebook 'Like Button' Replaces 'Become A Fan'

Facebook has unveiled a host of new features to its site, which include replacing the 'become a fan' terminology with a 'Like button,' launching 'Community Pages,' and revamping its privacy controls.

To introduce users to the 'Like' button, Facebook has posted an alert that appears on users' Facebook pages and directs them to a FAQ section with information about the new feature (see screenshot below).

Facebook explains why it scrapped 'become a fan' for 'Like:'

To improve your experience and promote consistency across the site, we've changed the language for Pages from "Fan" to "Like." We believe this change offers you a more light-weight and standard way to connect with people, things and topics in which you are interested.

The new 'Like' button will help users take advantage of and connect to the Community Pages Facebook is introducing--pages that are to serve as the 'best collections of shared knowledge.' (more about Community Pages here.)

'Liking' a Facebook Page isn't the same as 'Liking' a link, video, or status update a friend posts.

'Liking a Page means you are connecting to that Page. When you connect to a Page, it will appear in your profile and you will appear on the Page as a person who likes that Page,' Facebook says. 'On the other hand, when you click "Like" on a piece of content that a friend posts, you are simply letting your friend know that you like it without leaving a comment.'

The 'Like' button that appears on Facebook may be just the first step: there are rumors that Facebook plans to introduce a 'Like button for the web.'

The New York Times outlines the concept:

The Like button will allow Facebook to keep a record of what a user linked to, providing the company with ever more data about people's preferences. Facebook, in turn, plans to share that data with Web publishers, so that a magazine Web site, for instance, may be able to show users all the articles that their friends like.

Comments

[Alex1239]

08:00 AM on 06/14/2010

The facebook transition is really a good move, I guess. Become a Fan seems to be much heavier than simple Like button. For my site even, visitors usually tend to hit Like button more than Become a Fan button.
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[lien]

02:36 PM on 06/06/2010

If Britney Spears and Michael Jackson couldn’t sell Pepsi, what’s all the fuss about privacy? Even if a manufacturer learns of your likes and dislikes from Facebook to modify their product, they still don’t know how to sell. Since today’s advertising comes off as everyone saying the same thing, this has a negative effect on your capacity to remember to buy the product. For example, when was the last time you heard someone say they were going out to buy some Mr. Clean? So it does not matter if your likes and dislikes are known, the advertisers don’t know from symmetry!!

[EdBallsUp]

05:29 AM on 05/27/2010

I already had enough of all that and moved to www.folkdirect.com - they have open and honest privacy controls. I saw it on here a couple of weeks ago too so it's obviously picking up some interest.

[Bottomless]

03:20 AM on 05/02/2010

Facebook is actually crowdsourcing its search engine to take on Google and index more relevant content than complex algorithms from Google, Yahoo or Bing can extract for pages, as users themselves are directly pointing to Facebook what is worth sharing.

It also builds a "clean" search engine (who will "Like" a page and share porn links on their Facebook wall and directly into their friend streams?)

And if you remember Microsoft's investment of $240M in Facebook back in 2007, the ultimate beneficiary of this crowdsourced social search engine will be Bing.

Read more: http://blog.bottomlessinc.com/2010/05/facebook-rivaling-google-by-building-its-own-web-crawler-powered-by-you/

[mikej165]

05:18 PM on 05/01/2010

Like many, I have mixed feelings about the new functionality. Of course, I've tried it on several different blogs and have had different results on each. I've written an extended discussion of how it performs in different circumstances:

http://thewellrunsite.com/2010/05/01/is-facebooks-like-button-wrong-for-your-site/

[theCynch]

03:29 AM on 04/30/2010

I think there are a lot of mixed feelings about the Facebook Like Button.

Here's a video that analyzes the new feature, along with some talk about the privacy issue:

http://www.thecynch.com/analysis-of-the-facebook-like-button-privacy-issues/

-Cynthia

[Draxx]

06:17 PM on 04/22/2010

I really hate this change. Facebook could have gotten all these benefits without changing the terminology. We have to reshoot commercials and redesign websites! We have to SPEND REAL MONEY over this stupid change that offers -me - we -us - nothing new!

So we ask you all to "Become a Fan" of the "Bring Back the Become a Fan Button"

http://www.facebook.com/pages/manage/?act=49712385#!/pages/BRING-BACK-THE-BECOME-A-FAN-BUTTON/114984241860147

Its my opinion the developers show their age with this change. Being a baby is about discovering how your actions affect the physical world. Being an adolecent is about learning how your actions affect yourself. Being an "adult" is about understanding how your actions affect others - and acting responsibly. These guys are acting like Adolecents.

[87654]

01:34 PM on 04/22/2010

The biggest problem with current Facebook fan pages is the ridiculous fact that we cannot invite our supposed "FANS" to an event. Does anyone know if this has actually been addressed yet? Like, scmike. I don't care what it's called - I want it to be useful and if I earned the fans I have, I should be allowed to invite them to an event. They'll let you invite your "friends" from a personal page but why on earth did I create this "Fan page" then??? The point is to be able to interact with those fans. I wouldn't even have to maintain my personal page if it weren't for the lack of features and usability with fan pages. Facebook can be so stupid and so smart at the same time it's hilarious.

[Loni Wolf]

10:46 PM on 04/20/2010

ok, how do we keep our privacy & remain a fan of a page or person? or do we give up that in order to save our privacy from being broadcast over the internet even more than it is already? or do you just create a page in the name of an avatar?

[Tommunist]

05:52 PM on 04/20/2010

Okay, workaround for now:
This was the workaround being posted yesterday, and it still works today, although it is sort of a pain:

On Facebook, type your full page name in the search box. A drop-down should appear, and at the end of that, it should say "See more results for your page name" (where "your page name" is the name of your page). Click the "see more results." This will take you to a results page which should show your page. Below the result for your page, you will see: "xxx people like this." Click that, and it will show all of your fans/likers, and should be in the same order as when you could do it off of your page's profile page.

[Loni Wolf]

11:35 PM on 04/19/2010

except that what you "like" will be sent to Google to do with as they wish for marketing purposes .. where being a fan of was your own business. not .. just a minor change

[Loni Wolf]

10:19 PM on 04/19/2010

dumb change for dumb reason. dumb facebook. dumb us for being dumb users of dumb social network.

[arcanepsyche]

06:21 PM on 04/19/2010

I LIKE this change.

[MTibbs]

11:27 PM on 04/19/2010

Sure you like it.....question is, are you a FAN of it?

[Judson Parker]

05:25 PM on 04/19/2010

Doesn't seem to be any different, really...

[Daniela Smith]

01:21 PM on 04/21/2010

Hmmmm....I was thinking the same thing. But I haven't been on facebook in a few weeks so maybe I won't really know til I try it.

[Bennett Walker]

05:17 PM on 04/19/2010

isn't that taking away a feature and not adding one?

[arcanepsyche]

06:21 PM on 04/19/2010

It's the same feature with a different name. Nothing whatsoever has changes except the name of the function.

[bre-bro]

05:13 PM on 04/20/2010

You USED to be able to "view all" of your fans, so that when a new one was added, you could see who it was. NOW, you cannot. You can only "view all" of your existing friends who also "like" you. That's one change that took away a useful function.