I add a tiny facebook like button to my site, Sally clicks it and my URL gets pushed out to 100 of her friends.

What's not to like?

Because Sally is your daughter and now everyone has access to her life...

I'm with fearlessrick, Change or Die. Anyone making a living off the Internet has to have some concept of this, right?

I don't like this, I can't fully wrap my mind around where this is going. It could fail like so many of these ideas have before, but if it doesn't fail, it will likely be big, and I can't afford to be left behind.

I asked my teenage sons what they thought of this. To them, this is how the Internet should work. They can't believe that website managers would consider dismissing the idea before it's known if it is going to take off or not. They are the up and coming consumers and I can't afford not to listen to them.

Change or Die

That's a bit of an exaggeration, adopt and implement if you feel the need to but to state that by not using FB then the non-users will simply fade away into oblivion is slightly OTT.

We all know that there are many different user models out there therefore we use and adapt those we feel that best suit our own needs. I don't have a smart phone, I don't need a smart phone and 90+% of the people I know don't have them yet to listen to many people/industry pluggers I wonder how on earth these people existed before an app came along.

Anyway, I'm off for an early beer without all my FB acquaintances, they wouldn't know what real ale is anyway:-)

So I suppose in a month I'll be able to set up FB ad campaigns targeted towards users who have seen or clicked the like button on my site or my competitors sites.

Am I the only one, or is the beginning of the end of FB.

Facebook, like a mirror, will feed our narcissistic egos, and will survive for a long time.

I've got a pretty big ego, it looks like I'm missing out on something good. I never opened a facebook account. Does that mean I'm too late? I want to be cool too.

I did a FB when it came out. I think I went back twice. Haven't pharted with it since. My eqo is Sequoia sized, but FB didn't do it for me. Seems to work for some, and that's a good thing I suppose. But FB is not Websites/Pages and all that privacy issues, even early on, creeped me out a bit.

All of this is interesting. I'll be watching from the sidelines as the infantry charge on, then make my future strategy decisions after the body count has been tabulated.

I personally don't use FB but my wife does, and so do many millions more of people. It seems to me that the important things to watch are the viral impact that could occur because of a like button. I just went to CNN.com and looked at a random front page story. There were 58 likes/recommends to the story, meaning that 58 people had done the "tell-a-friend" routine with one click instead of filling out a form.

We as a species tend to form groups with similar interests. So this 'like' feature could get your page sent to a group with similar interests. If the president of the Red Widget club likes my page on Red Widgets, then the only outcome will be more traffic. It doesn't matter if I am on FB, but it seems like my site had better be.

There's a good write-up on the Facebook open graph [readwriteweb.com] which is well worth a read.

engine, there's a bunch of other interesting news about FB. There are 3 large investors: Peter Thiel, Accel Partners and Greylock

[theage.com.au...]

the real face behind Facebook is the 40-year-old Silicon Valley venture capitalist and futurist philosopher Peter Thiel. There are only three board members on Facebook, and they are Thiel, Zuckerberg and a third investor called Jim Breyer, from a venture capital firm called Accel Partners

THE THIRD BOARD member of Facebook is Jim Breyer. He is a partner in the venture capital firm Accel Partners, who put $US12.7 million into Facebook in April 2005. On the board of such US giants as Wal-Mart and Marvel Entertainment, he is also a former chairman of the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA)

Facebook's most recent round of funding was led by a company called Greylock Venture Capital, which put in the sum of $US27.5 million. One of Greylock's senior partners is called Howard Cox, another former chairman of the NVCA, who is also on the board of In-Q-Tel. What's In-Q-Tel? Well, believe it or not (and check out its website), this is the venture-capital wing of the CIA.
..
In-Q-Tel, which "identifies and partners with companies developing cutting-edge technologies to help deliver these solutions to the Central Intelligence Agency and the broader US Intelligence Community (IC) to further their missions"

Priceless.

Oh, and I guess on this note I should add the following, a 2004 Google "acquisition" of CIA-funded Keyhole from In-Q-Tel, which became "the best app ever" Google Maps. I guess this clears up why Google is hiding behind "2 girly founders" and can for some odd reason never get privacy issue straight.

October 27, 2004
Mountain View, CA
Google Inc. (Nasdaq: GOOG) today announced it acquired Keyhole Corp., a Mountain View, Calif.-based digital mapping company.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

[iqt.org...]

And this can't be done with a toolbar, like every other social news site, why?

Every site may implement such a feature in a different place. With a toolbar the user always knows where to click. This isn't about enabling members, it's about getting web site owners to promote Facebook.

I write at least two articles (blog posts) every day and now tweet them and put them on my FB page. I don't really know if it's helping at all, but there's yet another thread where people are whining about April adsense income being in the pits, while mine is just about even to last April.

Coincidence, bold insight or dumb luck? Whatever it is, it's working for me.

This is stupid - if we all just don't implement it the little douche is stuffed. Please don't use it, don't give them your data and control.

Please don't use it, don't give them your data and control.

What data are you referring to? Afaik, the only data it passes is the URL and how many times a FaceBook user loves your web page. How does that cede control?

This is a widget that sends traffic. It's a tell-a-friend widget. If you have a fear about this tell-a-friend widget, instead of posting that it's "stupid" please state the specifics of why this widget is harmful or not beneficial. Nobody in this discussion has detailed WHY this widget should be avoided. If there is a reason to FEAR this then it would benefit the community for someone to state the details. So please, someone, anyone, please state the facts of why webmasters should not use this tell-a-friend widget. ;)

My personal opinion is that this is a GIFT. It's an opportunity to add an additional traffic stream to a website. The purpose of this widget is to enable Facebook users to promote your website. In my opinion that's a good thing, it's a GIFT.