Facebook like button changes

Facebook has changed the way it’s like button for third party websites works over the weekend to post a full feed story rather than just a simple ‘Recent Activity’ one-liner. I’ve been testing that out via implementations on a couple of sites I’ve been working on and from a site owner’s perspective, this change seems a positive move. ‘Likes’ are now much more prominent in a user’s feed and seem better at attracting further follow-up likes from friends. From a facebook user’s point of view, I see this as an improvement too. If I’m clicking ‘like’ on something I’m wanting to share it with my friends and a full story in my feed seems a better way to do it.

Since the new like button functionality automatically tries to include an image, I found it particularly useful when used in conjunction with the og:image metadata from facebook’s open graph protocol. Using og:image allows you to specify a thumbnail to include in the story and avoids the situation where a random and sometimes inappropriate image is chosen for you.

Implementing both the like button and the open graph metadata are straightforward jobs and there’s a simple guide in the Facebook Like Button documentation.