Facebook Takes Over the Web Today

If you were paying attention to the Stage 2 Studios homepage, you maybe noticed a little Facebook "Like" button. Of course, you've seen this before if you use Facebook along the rest of the world...but notice this "Like" button doesn't appear on Facebook!

That's right, as of today Facebook has introduced a new "Like" plugin that can be integrated with any page on the web.

It's hard to over-state how huge this is: now Facebook users can share their "likes" of pages from sites all over the whole big world wide web. Of course, this could be done in the past through 3rd-party modules or by users simply copying the page url. But neither of these methods were truly integrated with Facebook, and the difference is huge.

For example, you'll notice the "Like" plugin on the Stage 2 homepage shows exactly who likes our homepage...actually you won't see who else likes it unless they are your Facebook friends. Yes, this plugin is facebook-profile-aware, not only sharing your "likes" through your Facebook feed, but also displaying which of your friends also like this content right next to the Like button. If so configured, you'll even see tiny profile photos of your friends under the button (we disabled this for the Stage 2 homepage).

And there's more: advertisers will be able to gather public profile data from the users who click these Like buttons. Soon, a whole new level of psychographic data will be available to internet advertisers. Not simply data about what sites you visit, but what sites truly interest you.

The best part? The Facebook Like plugin is easy for website owners to integrate with existing pages through a simple iFrame tag or (less simple but more rich) xml/javascript code. Learn more here: http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/like