Now that most of the web is scrambling to get like buttons and/or recommend buttons on their sites, there is going to be more "liking" and "recommending" on Facebook than ever before. While users may like or recommend a piece of content, that does not necessarily mean they like or recommend what that piece of content is about.

Users don't have a choice how this is displayed on their Facebook profiles, and while common sense can ordinarily separate intent of a "like" from the words on the screen, it can still lead to some inappropriate messages:


In these examples, I don't necessarily like that Corey Haim died and ended up on FamousDead. I don't necessarily like that a Blippy user's credit card number was found in Google again, and I don't necessarily recommend popping pills as a way to boost brain power.

You can also get generalizations like, "Chris likes Facebook Developers." Just because I like Facebook's developer channel doesn't mean I like all Facebook developers. There may be a few I specifically don't like, or even loathe.



People have expressed concern for this in the past, but now that like and recommend buttons are all over the web, you're going to see a lot more inappropriateness than ever before. It's just something for publishers to be aware of (and users for that matter). Perhaps this is something to keep in mind with your titles.

On a related note, lots of people have called for a dislike button for quite some time. There is even an unofficial Firefox extension for it, not to mention a Facebook group. I would imagine more than ever want to see that button now, although that would create a reputation management nightmare for brands.