Facebook gives FriendFeed’s “like” button a thumbs-up

February 9, 2009 | Eric Eldon | Comments | |

Facebook has been watching “lifestreaming” site FriendFeed closely, and today the larger company’s attention has resulted in a new FriendFeed-like feature in its news feeds. It’s a button called “like,” and it’s a one-click way to show your friends that you liked a link to a news story or other item. On FriendFeed, it’s called “like” with a smiley face. On Facebook, it’s a thumbs up.

Glimpses of Facebook’s “like” button have previously appeared in a demonstration video created by Facebook employees.

The feature’s pretty self-explanatory on FriendFeed, and it’s just as easy to figure out on Facebook. As Oscar Wilde once put it, genius steals.

More on the Facebook blog.

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About the Author, Eric Eldon

Eric currently covers digital media technology and business news, especially what's happening on social networks and their platforms. He also writes and edits stories about venture capital, and lots of other stuff, too. He started at VentureBeat in the spring of 2007, half a year or so after Matt Marshall left his reporting job at the San Jose Mercury News to found the site. Eric previously cofounded a startup called Writewith, that was building editorial software for newspapers and other groups of writers. The startup didn't work out, but he learned a lot.

  • Facebook User
    This was hardly original to FriendFeed. Thumbs have been used on web forums, like those on boardgamegeek.com for years.
  • Of course, Brett. I think what's interesting is that Friendfeed had incorporated it with lifestreaming content in a way that would clearly work well for something like Facebook's newsfeeds.