The Facebook Blog

There's a lot of content my friends have shared on Facebook that's pretty awesome. For instance, in the last few days I've seen photos from a friend's wedding, an article about U.S. President Obama's ongoing transition and status updates from a friend traveling in India.

We've just introduced an easy way to tell friends that you like what they're sharing on Facebook with one easy click. Wherever you can add a comment on your friends' content, you'll also have the option to click "Like" to tell your friends exactly that: "I like this."

Recently, I... had a friend write a note about running her first marathon and another friend upload pictures of his new baby. In both cases, they ended up with over 30 comments, all saying: "Awesome!" "Congrats!" The aggregation of the sentiment "I like this" makes room in the comments section for longer accolades.

This is similar to how you might rate a restaurant on a reviews site. If you go to the restaurant and have a great time, you may want to rate it 5 stars. But if you had a particularly delicious dish there and want to rave about it, you can write a review detailing what you liked about the restaurant. We think of the new "Like" feature to be the stars, and the comments to be the review.



Your friends, and their photos, notes, statuses and more are what make Facebook great. When your friends share something great, let them know you like it.


Leah Pearlman really likes the new "Like" feature.

We're always working on innovative ways to make your experience on Facebook more useful. Toward that goal, today we've added Microsoft Live Search to your Facebook search experience (for people in the US). This is the first step in giving you the ability to find content from across the web while using Facebook.
By integrating web search into Facebook, you can increase the information available to share with your friends, family and coworkers on the site. For example, your friend may invite you to an event at a new restaurant. Without leaving... Facebook, you can check out the details of the restaurant on the web. Or, say you see photos in your News Feed about a friend's recent trip to Dubai. Inspired, you can search the web for more information about travel without having to leave Facebook. Along with your search results, you may also begin to see ads for products, services or other things that are relevant to your query.

These are just a couple of examples of how search can improve your ability to find and share what is most relevant to you and those around you. We think there is the potential for much more and we're working on a number of other new ways to leverage all the web has to offer.



Leah is searching on Facebook for a good place to eat tonight with her friends.

Today we announced an entirely new advertising solution for Facebook. Right now, we want to make clear what's changing—and what's not—for you.

First of all, what's not changing:

• Facebook will always stay clutter-free and clean.
• Facebook will never sell any of your information.
• You will always have control over your information and your Facebook experience.
• You will not see any more ads than you did before this.

Here's what is changing:

• You now have a way to connect with products, businesses, bands, celebrities and more on Facebook.
• Ads should be getting more relevant and more meaningful to you.
• You now have the option to share actions you take on other sites with your friends on Facebook.

Engaging with businesses and buying things are part of your everyday life. Advertising doesn't have to be about interrupting what you're doing, but getting the right information about the purchases you make when you want it. We believe we've created a system where ads are more relevant and actually enhance Facebook.

You now have a way to connect with things you are passionate about. We've launched Facebook Pages, which are distinct, customized profiles designed for businesses, bands, celebrities and more to represent themselves on Facebook.

We noticed people wanted to connect with their favorite music, restaurants, and brands; but there was no good place for these types of affiliations to exist. Now, there is a place for them and you can become a fan of whatever pages you choose in order to interact with your passions in new ways. You can post reviews for a local restaurant, buy tickets to a new movie, or be the first to get a heads up about new promotions.

Ads will be getting more relevant and more interesting to you. Instead of random messages from advertisers, we've launched Social Ads. Social Ads provide advertisements alongside related actions your friends have taken on the site. These actions may be things like "Leah is now a fan of The Offspring" (if I added The Offspring to my music) or "Justin wrote a review for Sushi Hut" (If Justin wrote this review on the Sushi Hut page). These actions could then be paired with an ad that either The Offspring or Sushi Hut provides.

A sample Social Ad.

Behind the scenes, we've instituted a system that tailors ads to you and your interests, which should make ads more appealing. Advertisers never have access to who is seeing their ads, personal information about you, or even what social actions accompany their ads. In other words, all of this completely respects your privacy, while providing you with a better Facebook experience.

You now have the option to bring actions you take outside of Facebook back in. Just as Facebook shares your on-site interactions with your friends through News Feed, we now give you an option to let News Feed share your off-site actions with your friends as well.

This is the notification you'll see whenever another site wants to send a story to Facebook.

For example, adding the first season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer to your queue on Blockbuster.com might be something you want your friends to know about, so you can have a marathon. As usual, you have complete control over this information. Affiliate websites always notify you of any stories they want to send, and you'll have two opportunities—one on the website, and one on Facebook—to opt out of that story. Facebook always gives you the choice to decline a story the next time you log in.

We want Facebook to reflect and enhance all your real-world relationships—the movie you see this weekend as well as the friends who are seeing it with you. If you have any questions or suggestions for how we can improve this, let us know.



Leah, the Product Manager for Facebook Ads, spent hours agonizing over which band reference would make her seem cool. How did she do?

As Facebook grows, our users get more and more diverse. Some attend college, some have grandkids, some live in Norway, some are in relationships, some were born on February 29th, and some Facebook users are blind.

Some of these facts might surprise you ("not my grandparents" and "Norway? No way!" ). And that last group might be particularly surprising. Many sighted people aren't aware that computers today can be extremely accessible to the blind. I say "can be" because there are a couple factors at play:

First of all, a blind user must have... access to some kind of assistive technology. The most common type of assistive software for the blind is a screen reader. With a screen reader enabled, a user can tab through different elements on a page while the screen reader verbally describes each element.

While screen readers are pretty effective, they're not people-smart. In order to work properly, they require the program or website they're reading to adhere to certain guidelines. For example, a screen reader can't figure out who is in a picture, but if a picture has a clear descriptive caption, a blind user can better understand what's on the screen.

Most Facebook pages adhere to the guidelines which make the site accessible to the blind community. Recently, however, we received reports from a few devoted users that not all of our features were up to snuff. So, this week we launched a screen-reader accessible version of the Gift Shop . It's currently linked off the help page, though later this week we'll be incorporating it more tightly with the original Gift Shop.

We know there are areas on the site that still require accessibility enhancements. While balancing those enhancements with the rest of the work we have to do, we plan to make those changes soon. If you notice anything else we can do to improve access to Facebook, as always, feel free to submit your suggestions.



Leah is a product manager at Facebook. She's gifted.

Have you ever had a day where you log into Facebook and something looks different, but you can't put your finger on it? Not that you should anyway, your monitor will get all smudged. The reason for that feeling is that something probably is different.

To help keep everyone in the loop, we added a brand new page that chronicles what's new on Facebook. You can always get to it by clicking that link to the right of the Facebook Blog. Periodically, we'll slip a few of these "what's new" stories into your News Feed so that when something changes,... you'll get the heads up about it.