Facebook Silently Launches New “Like” Button Chrome Extension

Social media giants Facebook launched the Facebook Like Button extension for Google Chrome that adds the ability to “like” any webpage visited from the comfort of Chrome’s toolbar and context menu – back in July.

That’s right – there was never any formal announcement made about the extension by Facebook (or the Chrome team), but the extension has been available for two months already. As well as adding a “like this page on Facebook” thumbs-up button to your Chrome toolbar, the extension also adds an option to “like”, recommend and share pages and links directly from the right-click context menu.

The tool does not rely on website owners to implement the “like” plugin, in fact any page can receive the thumbs-up treatment which in turn is posted on a user’s wall. The extension adds Facebook functionality to Chrome immediately, though a Facebook account is required to make use of it.

Users can right-click on elements to share, though videos and audio are limited to HTML5 at the moment. Once a user clicks the “like” button they can add a comment and control who sees the action straight from Chrome. The button also reports the total number of users who have shared the page you are viewing, for quick reference.

Those concerned about privacy may be interested in this little disclaimer on the Chrome Web Store listing, which indicates that Facebook will gather data including IP addresses via the extension:

To provide a personalized experience, Facebook will see some technical information such as the URL of the page you are on, your IP address and the date and time you visited the site. All information collected before you log into Facebook is anonymous or aggregated and will not identify you.

Those using Firefox might be interested in this existing extension, as well as a similar Greasemonkey script.