The news is full of comment on Facebook’s latest innovation. That familiar ‘like’ button has escaped the bounds of Facebook itself, and can now be found across the web on all sorts of other sites, from news providers to film directories too – of course – consumer product sites.

See this My Deco page for an example of how it could work (via Channel 4).

Most of the stories are concerned about inadvertent privacy lapses that this could bring about. Do you want the whole world to know about your choice of underwear or your preferred pudding? If not, as a consumer, the choice is simple – just don’t press that ‘like’ button, however, used you may be to doing so within the Facebook environment.

As a retailer, though, you may be wondering whether to integrate this feature. We’d say it seems to be a feature with a lot of benefits for business – it’s free word-of-mouth advertising, or “increased eyeballs” as the phrase has it. However, if you’re a cautious type, you may wish to wait until the hype has died down a bit, and then reassess.

(If you’re not so cautious, and you want in on this feature NOW, give us a call!)