likes

Facebook has landed in some legal hot water over its use of ads that snatch the names of members of the social network to promote a product or business.

In a ruling issued Friday, U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, Calif., denied Facebook's request to dismiss a lawsuit over the practice of so-called sponsored stories. Such "stories," which started popping up this past January, create an ad based on the "likes" of a member's Facebook friends.

The ads typically display the friend's name, photo, and a caption asserting that the … Read more

As social networking has gone mainstream, so have the flock of buttons embedded in Web pages to get you to promote a story on the multitude of social-networking services you use. One Web developer has written a quick-and-dirty add-on that hides two of those gnat-like buttons from view. Dietrich Ayala, a developer for Mozilla based in Portland, Ore., wrote a new add-on called Wallflower to cut down on the memory use of buttons that he found superfluous.

Wallflower is a restartless add-on for Firefox, which means you won't have to restart your browser after installing it, and it performs … Read more

Too busy to keep up with the tech news? Here are some of the more interesting stories from CNET for Friday, August 19.

• In a hearing Monday before the International Trade Commission, Microsoft plans to press its case that Motorola's Android-powered devices violate its patents. The hearing will focus on the validity of Microsoft's patents and on whether Motorola infringed on them. The hearing should last 10 days.

• What are the risks of wireless medical devices? One security researcher discovered that he could hack his wireless insulin pump and remotely control it. "The second reaction was one … Read more

A German state would very much like for its residents to keep their fingers--and other assorted pointers or cursors--away from Facebook's "Like" button.

The state of Schleswig-Holstein has ordered all government offices to remove the button from their Web presence and shut down any Facebook "fan" pages, on the grounds that these things violate German and European data privacy laws. A release from the Independent Centre for Privacy Protection in the German state claims that information collected from German users' "liking" and other activities is sent back to the United States where Facebook … Read more

Just what we need. Another button on the Web. But Chris Lyman, CEO of SendLove.to, believes there is a gaping hole in the feedback market; that Likes and Tweets and Shares and Comment buttons don't do enough to collect opinion and give people feedback on themselves.

We're not insecure enough already?

"Public figures should be insecure," Lyman says. And there is in fact already a business model here: Polls. Lyman wants to to better: "The social Web should be able to deliver in seconds," what existing polling systems, like the Rasmussen presidential poll, do now.

SendLove gives Web surfers the ability to like--and importantly, to dislike--people they're reading about. Users can also comment on the people they are reading about.

What gives SendLove some potential is that commentary on individuals is collected in one place (on each site or blog). So as a site covers a popular figure--say, a politician, celebrity, or sports figure--the readers can see what other people have to say about that person outside of a particular story. You can track how public opinion on a person is trending over time, see how various articles affect the trend, and compare the popularity on the site you're on with the overall Web-wide popularity. It's an interesting and different way to get into discussions about public figures.

… Read more

Might we finally be getting the long-sought-after "dislike" button on Facebook?

The social-networking giant is working on an overhaul of its News Feed product, where users post status updates, photos, videos, and other items of interest, according to a Wall Street Journal report. Facebook is considering an unfiltered News Feed, which would dramatically increase the amount of content users see on their homepage, people familiar with the situation told the newspaper.

The site is also working on expanding the functionality of its "Like" button to include other hand gestures created by third-party developers, allowing users to … Read more

Recently, a Crave freelancer pinged me to lament that no one liked him anymore. I felt sad for him, until he explained that it wasn't that nobody liked him anymore, it was that nobody "Liked" him anymore.

The number displayed on the Facebook Like button on his CNET author profile, it turned out, had spontaneously reset itself from 300-plus to one. I posited that a temporary technical glitch had caused the change and, with a wink and a smile (of the emoticon variety) assured him that his stories continued to generate copious reader interest and I planned to keep him on as a Crave writer until he was at least 80.

Clearly caught in that murky vortex where the real-world and digital selves intersect, the writer seemed a bit irked by the mishap. But as these things go in the world of third-party algorithms, his original Like number reappeared just as randomly as it had disappeared.

I, for one, found the episode amusing. Until a few weeks later, when my own Like number started fluctuating wildly.

One minute--were one to assign meaning to such things--the number at the bottom of my stories might be interpreted to indicate that only my first cousins cared to follow my work, the next that I might have a stab at being the next Walt Mossberg.

CNET's social-networking guru blamed the jumpy numbers on a pesky symbol contained in the URL of my author profile. A new URL was the only way to fix the problem once and for all, he said, though doing so would automatically reset my Like count to zero. It sounded a bit like having to suddenly move and make new friends, but I told him to go for it.

At first, I didn't pay much attention to my newly nonexistent Like count (after all, I'd told my fellow writer not to give it a second thought when his numbers went poof). But when I mentioned the situation to a social-networking-savvy co-worker, he looked at me with a sad-eyed empathy that made me rethink the gravity of being so un-Liked in 2011. "Man, that sucks," he frowned. "You've been robbed."

The more I thought about it, the more I thought he might be right. But, torn between the part of me that understands that 10,000 virtual friends do not one real friend make and the part of me that's flattered to be Liked and retweeted, I couldn't quite figure out what, exactly, I'd been robbed of. … Read more

American Express is promising cardmembers who use Facebook special deals and discounts. The only catch? AmEx needs access to your Facebook interests, likes, and friends.

In a new program dubbed "Link, Like, Love" and unveiled today on AmEx's Facebook page, cardmembers will be able to choose from a variety of special deals. By using the new app on the Facebook page, members can access a personalized dashboard through which they'll find deals and discounts based on their Facebook likes and interests, and the likes and interests of their friends. Cardmembers can then pick the deals they … Read more

The otherwise staid and professional Jason Hiner joins us from TechRepublic to discuss important issues like the amazing Yonanna machine, which turns your banana into froyo just like that! Ok, ok, in tech news, a 19-year-old is arrested in the UK, but LulzSec says he's just the IRC moderator. Sounds important to us. Plus, your Facebook and Twitter posts will haunt you for seven years, just like your bad credit card purchases.