Facebook gives THUMBS DOWN to its OWN design makeover

Facebook has unveiled a design tweak that will change the look of one of the social networking site's most oft-used features.

The company said in a note to web developers that it would be debuting new looks for its "Like" and "Share" buttons. Website owners and publishers will be able to embed the buttons directly into their sites and allow users to share stuff through the service as per usual.

While a minor tweak, Facebook engineer Ray C. He noted that the two buttons are in fact some of the most-viewed pixels on the web.

"Together, the Like and Share buttons are viewed over 22 billion times daily across more than 7.5 million websites," He said in a post to the company's developer blog. "Like and Share are important drivers of Facebook referral traffic."

Gone from the Like button will be the "thumb" icon, replaced by a solid blue button with the Facebook logo on one end. Likewise, the Share button will sport a streamlined blue button design with the Facebook icon.

Additionally, Facebook said that it will offering a new configuration option that places the Share and Like buttons side by side on a web page. The Mark Zuckerberg-run social network said that developers should automatically see the cosmetic changes to the buttons as the company implements the feature. No additional coding will be necessary. ®