Facebook is one of the major social networks and they have their own share buttons. However, the design has remained unchanged for a while and that is why the company has announced today the newly redesigned ones from the share buttons to the ubiquitous “like” button
The Facebook Like button has been embedded in publisher websites in a bid to let people easily like their official Facebook Pages. You can see the contrast between the old and the new in the above illustration where you can see 3 changes: First, the Facebook logo has been replaced with the like logo, the Page size has been included in the same glyph and a change in the font style. The new style looks flatter and better than before. According to Facebook, they conducted tests between the two designs where apparently the new one resulted in an increase in engagement,so we have to see if that is true.
The second announcement is about the redesigned share buttons which includes the like button. They follow the same flat design philosophy we saw from the “Save to Facebook” button (which was announced 2 months ago) and the refreshed Like button.
The other announcement is Instant Articles integration. Instant Articles is Facebook’s proprietary platform that allows you to read articles that load almost instantaneously. In the new update, publishers who use Instant Articles will be able to add the Like, Comment and Share buttons at the bottom of their posts.
Finally, Facebook announced two new Chrome extensions: Share to Facebook and Save to Facebook. This will allow you to share or save an article with ease on Facebook which is important for Facebook to be relevant in being the only source of news for a lot of people out there. The company announced the Save to Facebook button at F8 conference in April so it is commendable of them to roll out a way to save articles on Facebook while surfing the web on desktop via Chrome.
