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Facebook Testing the Want Button

Posted by samzenpus on from the do-not-want dept.

redletterdave writes "Facebook already knows what you 'Like.' Soon, it may ask you what you 'Want'. Tom Waddington, a Web developer for the craft website Cut Out + Keep, discovered that Facebook has included code for a disabled 'Want' button within the Javascript of its list of social plug-ins. The code was released to the Facebook Javascript SDK last Wednesday, but Waddington discovered the disabled button among other embedded tags, including 'degrees,' 'social context' and 'page events.' Waddington says the 'Want' button would work with Open Graph projects that use the tag 'products.'"

18 of 147 comments (clear)

  1. More than anything in the world... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...I want Facebook to die.

    1. Re:More than anything in the world... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      Your ideas are intriguing to me and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter

    2. Re:More than anything in the world... by biometrizilla · · Score: 5, Funny

      I want to see how many "Wants" Kate Upton's page gets.

    3. Re:More than anything in the world... by CanHasDIY · · Score: 4, Funny

      ...I want Facebook to die.

      Where's that damn like button when you need it?

      --
      An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
    4. Re:More than anything in the world... by ae1294 · · Score: 4, Funny

      Your ideas are intriguing to me and I would like to subscribe to your facebook.

    5. Re:More than anything in the world... by Charliemopps · · Score: 3, Insightful

      unfortunately fads only die when even more terrible fads replace them.

    6. Re:More than anything in the world... by rockout · · Score: 5, Insightful

      None of you really have a problem with Facebook. Your real problem is with the human race, a large percentage of which have signed up for Facebook and whose numbers have grown so large that it's impossible for the rest of us to avoid Facebook, as it has permeated our lives whether we wanted it to or not.

      It's like living in Boston and trying to avoid any mention of the Red Sox.

      --
      I've learned that they're worthless, so I don't read AC comments anymore.
    7. Re:More than anything in the world... by schnell · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I can't think of any marketing professional who would give two shakes about this metric

      Are you kidding? If I make a post about how I just bought a new Samsung Galaxy Class Starship at T-Mobile and my friends click the "want" button, it is absolutely worth gold to T-Mobile to have their ads steered to those FB users.

      Or as another application... I already share my Amazon Wishlist with my friends so they can buy me stuff I actually want for my birthday/Christmas ... why not push that directly onto Facebook and allow sellers of those items to advertise for them and/or compete on price via ads?

      --
      "95% of all Slashdot .sig quotes are incorrect or completely fabricated." -Benjamin Franklin
    8. Re:More than anything in the world... by sarysa · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Which is why we so desperately need to fund space research. It's the only way to get away from Facebook.

      --
      Charisma is the measure of someone's ability to lie with a straight face.
    9. Re:More than anything in the world... by silentcoder · · Score: 3, Interesting

      >It will. It's just another fad after all.

      I'm not so sure you're right. It's already outlived every social network before it (by which I mean total lifespan from foundation to demise) - and it doesn't even seem to have peaked in users yet.
      Several attempts at competition have come and gone - twice from the mighty google (and one of those arguably had a better user-experience to start with) and still it remains the behemoth of most people's online experience.

      There may be more to this than just a fad. I think part of it may be in their internal approach to running the company. They seem to seriously focus on being an awesome place to work who can get the best of the best coding minds. A friend of mine was a google engineer, she just left them for facebook - she actually took a paycut to do that (granted she was with google in Zurich which is the best paid development office in the WORLD - she would take a paycut for ANY other job).
      If you look at their job ads they include this choice line: "Most developers are used to weeks or months between writing code and it reaching production. At facebook, your code will be in production on the busiest website in the world within days."

      Now doesn't that sound exciting ? Scary? Challenging ? The kind of thing that the true geniusses of our field love ?
      Maybe, just maybe, facebook is doing well because they offer a service their users find valuable, their customers benefit from (and I am well aware that those aren't the same people) and they give their technologists the creative free reign to make magic ?

      --
      Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
  2. Obligatory by sam_paris · · Score: 5, Funny

    Do not want.

    1. Re:Obligatory by ohnocitizen · · Score: 3, Funny

      I already want it. SO BAD. I want the following buttons for status: "Dislike", "Do Not Want", "That's What She Said", "That's What He Said", "That's What the Fuzzy Little Creature From Alpha Centauri Said".... Oh, and also "Winter is Coming".

  3. Next: "Fucked" button. by Post-O-Matron · · Score: 5, Funny

    So we know who fucked whom.

    What else is left?

    1. Re:Next: "Fucked" button. by 0100010001010011 · · Score: 4, Informative

      They used to have it. Under 'Relationships' there was a 'Hooked Up' option with a date. iirc it was one of 4: Single, It's complicated, In relationship with and hooked up.

      Back before the apps, before ... well damn near everything.

  4. Dislike Button by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    That would actually make facebook a useful tool. Of course the advertisers don't want their products to be branded as disliked, so it will never happen.

  5. Re:Ob. Babylon 5 Reference by Antipater · · Score: 5, Funny

    Yeah, but the next question in that line is "Do you have anything worth living for?" Then Facebook gets sued for causing a thousand suicides.

    --
    Everything is better with chainsaws.
  6. Re:Great by Nidi62 · · Score: 4, Funny

    Soon you will be able to tell Facebook more complicated things like:

    me want banana like banana .

    Daylight come and me wanna go home?

    --
    The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
  7. Facebook has the only button Facebook needs: by PeanutButterBreath · · Score: 5, Funny

    "Log Out"

    I'm sure they are looking in to ways to phase it out.