“Like” buttons have been around on the Internet for a while now. But most people didn’t pay too much attention to them until Facebook came along with their one-like-button-to-rule-them-all. Now it seems as if every site on the Internet needs a Like button. And while most companies are content to use Facebook’s, some behemoths prefer to keep their data in-house. Like Amazon.
It appears that the online shopping giant is currently in the process of testing out their own Like button. As you can see in the screenshots taken by reader Arul Isai Imran, their button looks similar to Facebook’s, complete with the thumbs-up icon. Clicking on the button turns it orange and changes the text within the button to “Liked”. Interestingly, below that, there’s a check-box that reads “Don’t use for recommendations” — clearly, the main intention here is for Amazon to use this button for recommendations.
And that makes a lot of sense. A huge part of Amazon’s business is recommendations. Currently, they look at what you’ve been browsing for on Amazon and especially what you’ve bought. This Like button will give them one more explicit signal, something in-between browsing and buying.
It would seem that most people aren’t seeing this button yet (I’m not, for example), but plenty of people are, and it seems as if they’re mainly being tested on Amazon Books pages right now. You’ll also note in the screenshots below that Amazon has cleaned up the design of their header a bit.
[images: twitpic/aruvam]