The Facebook Like has a new look. The Like button, which is embedded on millions of web pages, is getting the “f” out and replacing it with the familiar thumbs up icon. The Like count will appear within the new blue button.
Here’s a comparison of the current Like design and how it will change:
Updating the Like button, and all of Facebook’s other social-sharing buttons (Share, Send, Follow, Recommend, or Save) with the new flat design, is part of Facebook’s effort to get more mobile-friendly. Facebook noted that 30 percent of Like button impressions come from mobile devices.
“Our hypothesis was that more people would recognize the thumbs-up icon on the like button, so we conducted qualitative and quantitative tests to measure them side by side,” said Facebook in a blog post.
In testing the new button, Facebook indeed found greater engagement – a 6 percent increase in Likes.
Facebook redesigned these buttons to be “backwards compatible,” so you don’t need to do anything if they’re already embedded on your site. The updated buttons will simply begin rolling out in the coming weeks.
If you don’t yet have yet have these buttons, you can learn more here.
Instant Article Integration & New Chrome Extensions
Facebook also revealed that Instant Article publishers will soon be able to add Like, Comment, and Share buttons to the bottom of their articles. These interactions will be part of aggregate Like and Share counts, the company said:
If you have the Comments Plugin installed on your site, comments on a web article will sync the conversation with its Instant Article equivalent. If you have Comment Mirroring turned on for the Comments Plugin, comments from the article’s post in News Feed will be synced with the web article and the Instant Article, creating a unified thread across all three surfaces.
In addition, Facebook is adding two new extensions: Share to Facebook and Save to Facebook.
More than 300 million people have used the Save on Facebook feature, which lets people save links to articles, images, videos, products, or pretty much anything else you can find on the web.
Speaking of liking things, if you haven’t already, you can Like on Facebook.
What say you? Do you like the redesigned Like button?
Image Credits
All images provided by Facebook. Feature Image created by author.
