The Facebook "Like" Starts to Replace the Share Button’s Functionality

Facebook is rolling out a change to its social sharing buttons: “Like” will now act a lot more like “Share.”

In other words, when you hit that “Like” button to express your thumbs-up approval of a particular site or story, Facebook will now post an update to your wall that includes a lot more details about what you’re approving. A Facebook “Like” will now include a picture, a headline and a little blurb, along with the option to comment, just as it does when you purposefully share a story to Facebook.

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Facebook spokesperson Malorie Lucich told Mashable that Facebook will continue to support the share button but that like will be the “recommended solution moving forward.” Calling the changes today “a test,” Facebook says it’s looking for developer feedback on how this new functionality works.

But Inside Facebook reports that the old version of the share button has been removed from developers’ documentation. Up ’til now, developers had several options about how the button would push content to Facebook – a share button, a simple, comment-less like, and a recommend-with-comment option. Unless the latter was chosen, users only got a link to the story on the recent activity section of their wall. Now the Facebook buttons will all generate a full story.

This change will likely be a boon to publishers who will see more of their content fill more news streams, and in turn, hopefully gain more referral traffic as a result. But it may not be a welcome change to Facebook users who find their feeds full of likes-are-now-shares.

Will the auto-publishing to your wall change how you use Facebook’s Like button?

Discuss