Facebook Turns “Like” Button Into Two-Way Street, Challenging Amazon for Buyer Data

Facebook has just announced that it will allow publishers to contact users who have “liked” a page by inserting things into that user’s News Feed. The new feature may annoy users, and that may be the idea. By providing an incentive to use their “likes” wisely, Facebook will help turn the Like button — once a relatively blunt instrument — into a much more refined tool.

The Like button has a very specific purpose, but until now, it wasn’t very good at its job. Like Amazon’s (AMZN) huge catalog of past purchases, or Mint’s (INTU) new “saving” features, Facebook’s Like button is an experiment in purchase data: it’s meant to figure out what you, the user, would like to buy. But unlike Amazon’s data, which is based on actual things you bought, or Mint’s system, which asks you what you’d like to save up for, the data Facebook’s Like button collected was susceptible to all kinds of inaccuracies. Read more at www.bnet.com