New Facebook Widget: Share The Love ... Or Hate
The "Comments Box" widget, built on top of its Connect service, lets Facebook users post their opinions on outside Web sites and blogs. It also lets non-Facebook users make comments about sites as well. Facebook said that users can manage the privacy and permissions of their comment boxes on an individual or widespread basis.
"The Comments Box is a great way for any Web site, blog or photo gallery to add social comments to their page in just a minute with a few lines of code," said Ray He, on Facebook's blog.
The widget launch comes in the midst of an outpouring of criticism the social-networking site received this week after it changed its terms of service without notifying users.
Adding insult to injury, Facebook said that by agreeing to the new TOS, users "grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, nonexclusive, transferable, worldwide license to use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain and distribute any user content you post."
While there is a saying that the only bad publicity is no publicity, the whole debacle couldn't have been what Facebook marketers were aiming for. Facebook subsequently did an about-face and reinstated its old TOS, but many users were not mollified, and the issue stayed on Web news sites and blogs all week.
"Here's to increasing the number of comments and conversations," He advised on Facebook's blog.