Facebook Drops The Thumb, Intros New “Like” & “Share” Buttons

Facebook has given the thumbs down to its three-year-old “Like” button, introducing a new version that replaces the “thumbs up” symbol with Facebook’s logo. A new, matching “Share” button was also introduced today.

In a blog post Wednesday, Facebook’s Ray He says the new buttons produced positive results during testing:

We’re already seeing a favorable increase in Likes and Shares with the new design and will be rolling these buttons out to everyone in the coming weeks. If you are currently using the old Like button, you’ll be automatically upgraded to the new design as part of our roll out.

That second sentence is important for brands and marketers to keep in mind — if you’re already using official Facebook code, the buttons will update automatically on your site(s). I’m sure that social button providers will also update their plugins automatically, as well. Anyone needing to update the buttons manually can get instructions straight from Facebook: Like button and/or Share button.

The thumb isn’t completely gone. It still shows up in versions of the Like button that also display the number of Likes.

In today’s announcement, He also revealed that Like and Share buttons are seen more than 22 billion times a day across more than 7.5 million websites.