Facebook's 'Like' Button Invades Internet

Changes greeted with concern, hyperbole
By Kevin Spak,  Newser Staff
Posted Apr 22, 2010 1:51 PM CDT
Facebook's 'Like' Button Invades Internet
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg delivers a keynote address at a conference in San Francisco, Wednesday, April 21, 2010.   (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)

Tech analysts are positively wetting themselves over Facebook's decision to open its social graph to the world and create a web-wide “like” button. “Facebook is basically going to be the web,” Slate's Farhad Manjoo tweeted. The move essentially turns browsing the web from a solitary act into a “sprawling network of connectivity,” says Brennon Slattery of PC World. Go to CNN, and it'll show you sites your friends like—even if you've never been to CNN before.

More importantly, Facebook will record and understand your actions. “Like” a movie on IMDB, and Facebook will toss it into your Favorite Movies section. “The implications are enormous … and terrifying,” writes Barrett Sheridan of Newsweek. Facebook would be in total control of a new, context-savvy Internet. And there are privacy concerns—users could unwittingly surrender loads of data. “It's not a matter of 'could be' used for marketing information,” a privacy advocate tells ABC. “That's exactly what it's used for.” (More Facebook stories.)

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