liking facebook’s ultimate “like” button – there’s viral gold underneath it!

(eyeball time: 1.5 minutes but you might read faster…)

the dea skinny on what’s happening:

www.facebook.com

during its 2010 developer conference in san francisco, facebook unveiled the “like” button. now as the dust has settled from the excitement, concerns about such a ubiquitous button have surfaced. we’d like to take a moment to review several of them…

the stakes:

you must give the social networking giant kudos for being so bold to develop a tool that can literally span the net. while it’s not really the first of its kind, think about amazon.com‘s “buy this” button, the implications of its release are worth noting. specifically, the type of data in which facebook will be acquiring is a gold mine. in fact, it could be argued that this data is more valuable than current search terms tracked by google. facebook now tracks personal preferences. these personal preferences can then be used for targeted marketing efforts – an incredibly invaluable resource for businesses.

the dea takeaway:

if the search engine war wasn’t hot enough, facebook’s “like” button throws another log into the fire. this newest innovation challenges and severely limits a search engine’s ability to track popular and relevant content on the web. utilizing this button, web sites can now easily drive web traffic from fb more effectively. for example, as a user likes a certain page, the information is then pushed directly to a user’s fb account which then appears on their news feed. the “like” button relies on fb proprietary code to index a wide range of information, websites and connections. this presents a huge disadvantage for google as fb moves to block indexing by the search engine. so, what does this mean for you?

on the surface, installing this code takes a bit of tailoring. from adjusting the content displayed on fb feeds to the design of the button, its installation takes a bit of extra leg work. once the button is installed, visitors can click on the “like” button and not only receive content from your website, but simultaneously show to their friends that they found your content relevant. this increase in exposure of one visitor to multiple exposures to an exponential amount of individuals in a relatively short period of time aides in the virality (and virility) of your content.

for more information, please contact us at 512.825.6866 to discuss the issues more fully and the specific impact & implications to your business. it’s free!