by samThe Facebook-like button that has been available as a Firefox extension and Greasemonkey script for a while is now available for Chrome. Apparently, a side project developed by a software engineer at Facebook, the extension was launched less than two months ago in early July. So why are we talking about it now? It has only recently come to light because it was launched by Facebook very quietly with no form of official announcement.
Intended to rival Google’s “+1” button, the plug-in adds a like button to the top right of the Chrome browser alongside the search box. It also adds an option to the right-click menu allowing you to “like” specific content such as images or HTML5-based audio or video files. The real benefit of this is that it allows you to share content regardless of whether the owner has included the Facebook plugin on their website or not.
This is good news in the world of Facebook advertising, as the net of social media has been cast even further, allowing a simpler way of employing additional Facebook advertising techniques without the need to add plugins for new content.
Perhaps the reason for the lack of publicity is that it still needs some development to iron out the kinks before it is user-ready. Many have complained about how counterintuitive it is for the button to bring up a submenu where the “Like” option has to be selected before it likes the current page.
There has been, as always, some concern as to how Facebook will use the data it collects using the extension, which will include the user’s IP address, the URL visited, and at what time. The company has, however, stated that all data will be kept anonymous. Though in a day and age where so many people store a large amount of personal information within their social network, it will likely not cause too much worry for most.