Odd: Typepad Receives Facebook Like Button Love, WordPress Left Out In The Cold? UPDATE: A WordPress Plugin Is Now Available

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Update: WordPress plugin now available. See below for more details.

Yesterday at Facebook’s developer conference (aka f8 conference), CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg revealed to the world the glorious “like button.”

Zuckerberg claims that by the end of today, users will serve over 1 billion likes across the world wide web, making the Facebook like button a “must have” social button for serious bloggers.

To my surprise Facebook chose to launch this new feature upon Typepad, all the while ignoring one of the world’s most popular blogging platform, WordPress.

Today Facebook announced their new Social Plugins and we’re excited to be a showcase launch partner. In fact, TypePad bloggers are the only bloggers to have access to these features at launch. Woot! […]

Facebook is a great way to introduce new audiences to your blog. Last year we added the ability for you to automatically share posts with your friends on Facebook. Now with Facebook’s new Like button, any visitor to your blog can show their appreciation for your blog. [via]


For the record, it also looks as if Posterous fans were also able to receive an early invitation to try out the Facebook like button, although it still seems a little strange that WordPress (at least on WP.com) was not invited to participate as well.

WordPress fans are already discussing ways of manually implementing the Facebook like button upon their respective blogs, as a plugin has yet to be created by a WP guru (note: if anyone does develop one, feel free to let us know in the comment section).

Typepad’s latest Facebook fortune could help the blogging site maintain its lead against Tumblr (at least in the US), as well as help keep the nimble blog platform relevant in an age where Blogger and WordPress dominate the global scene.

Update: In the comment section Noah Fleming has informed us that Allan Joseph Batac has created a Facebook “Like” Plugin for WordPress fans! Hopefully he will be able to upload it to the WordPress plugin directory (so he won’t receive a massive bandwidth bill).

Author: Darnell Clayton

Darnell Clayton is a geek who discovered blogging long before he heard of the word “blog” (he called them “web journals” then).

When he is not tweeting, friendfeeding, or blogging about space, he enjoys running, reading and describing himself in third person.

Comments

  6. Franky Branckaute says

    Oh, I already hardcoded the ‘Like’ button in the design of ForeverGeek and Celebrific, two sites where Facebook does well. Not so much on ‘Blogging’ stuff though, Twitter is where the action is.

  7. Cellulite Gel Jen says

    The like button and share button have been revolutionized by facebook. The share button would likely cause massive storms of spam, but the like button is a different worry. This is a interestint direction we’re headed in.

  11. Mr. Gunn says

    It’s entirely possible that the WordPress devs declined to officially support the button because they disagree with the way Facebook has forced everyone to opt out of every site that uses it.

    Many older web gurus (read: computer science geeks, not MBAs) have spoken out against it. Speaking for it? The likes of the cellulite gel spammer above.

  14. Thorn says

    This is amazing. Ive just got the like feature for my blog now. Thanks (to the commenters as much as the blog herald.

  15. Syed Balkhi says

    There are tons of WP plugins that are coming out with this feature. Can’t understand why is there a need to duplicate the same darn plugin over and over. Don’t know about WP.com but we can use it on any stand alone WordPress site.

  17. imran14826 says

    I’ve always wanted a Dislike option on Facebook to go along with Like. PollDaddy Ratings have had thumbs up/down for quite some time and can be used with posts, pages, and comments.

    Imran14826
    http://www.livetv.pk