Facebook recently rolled out new features to allow social integration for third-party sites. Pictured here you will see ‘the like button‘ plugin in action.
To implement this button on your website you just have to copy and paste a snippet of code, super easy, and now you will have a like button that, when clicked, updates your facebook profile with a message liking the website. It also adds a profile icon under the button. This starts to get very interesting when you think about visiting a site and see that two of your friends like this article, or brand of jeans.
Levi’s is one of the first sites to adopt this feature. Check out their site to see some of the possibilities.
There has been some concern about the privacy issues at play here. For instance I went to docs.com to check out Microsoft and Facbook’s answer to Google Docs, what I found was that the website already knew who I was and addressed me by my name. Certainly a weird feeling. Read this article from the New York Times on how to opt-out of instant personalization.
For now I am pretty excited about the possibility of social integration. We are playing around with the idea for the like button on nols.edu course pages. Imagine seeing that one of your friends liked the Wind River Wilderness course. It’s a conversation starter, and NOLS thrives on word-of-mouth.
