After this, the company has six months to file a statement of use and pay a fee. An examining attorney can either approve the statement, file a refusal or ask for additional requirements. If it’s approved, then the patent and trademark office will usually issue a registration within two months.

Facebook first filed for this trademark almost five years ago in December of 2005. That was when it had only raised its first venture round of investment from Accel Partners and was still a college social networking site.

The trademark would cover the word “face” when it pertains to:

Telecommunication services, namely, providing online chat rooms and electronic bulletin boards for transmission of messages among computer users in the field of general interest and concerning social and entertainment subject matter, none primarily featuring or relating to motoring or to cars.

If Facebook is awarded a trademark on the word “face”, it shouldn’t interfere with Apple’s mobile video calling service Facetime, since the Cupertino-based device maker has a trademark on that term itself.

Facebook has also tried to trademark other words. It has at least 15 trademark applications around the “like” buttons it launched in April, some of which cover the word “like” itself.

The social network tends to be more aggressive with its trademarks than its patents, which it has implied it acquires mostly for defensive purposes. The company is currently embroiled in a dispute with parody site Lamebook, which takes user-generated screenshots of off-color interactions on the social network. It also sued social network aggregator Power.com for trademark infringement last year.

Facebook, by its nature, begs the question of why humans have a need to share information with others.  We have all, as we used the service, broadcast messages out to a larger audience than we’re used to.  Either by posting a presumably funny comment or a longer post about some good news in your life.

We also find it important to keep some of our basic information intact on the site, as Facebook represents our virtual self.  That means breaking up with a longtime girlfriend is no longer the situation it once was.  Whereas the news would trickle out through word of mouth to friends, now the news gets posted on your wall, and is available for everyone to see.  Surely, some users forget to ‘remove’ it, even when they don’t want to broadcast it, and it’s left there on a person’s wall as an awkward, painful reminder of their recent emotional turmoil.

Don’t click like on that post.

2) Your Own Post

It is pretty lame to like your own post.  It just looks funny, and is pretty embarassing when it’s just you that has liked the post.  Well, now that I think about it, if you really feel like showing everyone that your funny comment is worth even more than the time you so obviously put into writing it, then click like on your own hilarious joke.  In this situation, the joke itself becomes less important, as the real joke becomes how you’ve demonstrated yourself to be at a level of insecurity so high that you’re now reaffirming yourself on Facebook.

Yeah, so unless you’re a level three joker whose friends understand your self-liking as an act of parody, don’t like your own posts!

3) Farmville Anything

The last thing we need is an army of people liking random Farmville posts for free cows and barn doors.  As if there isn’t enough Farmville going around, for some reason this new generation of gamers has become so obsessed with the game that they feel the need to just quickly tap ‘like’ on any Farmville post they see.  What magic sauce did Zynga put into this friggin’ game?  It’s not even a new concept.  When I see the amount of fandom this game gets, I’m always blown away, so I’m here to say a few things.  You already play the game, you already pay Zynga for virtual pig troughs… You don’t need to click like on other people’s Farmville news feed items!

Just joking Zynga!

4) Friend Request Acceptances

If your high school friend just made friends with one of your elementary school friends, and you’re living 2,000 miles away and haven’t talked to either in years, refrain from being overcome with a sudden blast of nostalgia or you’ll end up “liking” their new friendship.  And in your rose-colored haze you might miss the fact that you liking that relationship is as creepy as Jack Nicholson popping his head into a smashed up door in the shining.  That’s what it will feel like to them, because you just popped your presence into a situation where you are effectively very creepy.  I think Facebook is a place where people can easily become creepy and have no idea, so keep this in mind next time you “like” a random post.

5) Rest In Peace Comments

I’ve found that some people also find peace in letting the world know about their deceased friends or relatives.  I can understand that this helps people pay homage to a person they had respect for, and I respect that as well.

However, the nature of the “like” button means that it’s just not an option to show your own respect to them using the button.  I’ve seen many Rest In Peace comments, and not a single person has clicked “like” yet, so it seems that we all understand that button and that click can only be misconstrued.  That said, have you ever seen anybody press it?

Previously branded as “Facebook Connect”, websites have the ability to increase engagement (often twice as much) of visitors coming to their site. For now, Facebook is doing what they always have done well: promoting their products in an effort to build Facebook as an integral part of the web.

A month ago, Facebook began phasing out the Facebook Fan Page, changing the action of “becoming a fan” to “liking.” The change was part of a broader plan to spread the Like button across the web and to lower the barrier for users to become connected with brands.

Not everyone “likes” Facebook’s small but important wording change, though. Now that we’ve had a month to digest the changes that the social network has implemented with Facebook Pages, we wanted to ask you: Which wording do you prefer?

The debate between “like” and “fan” is the subject of this week’s Web Faceoff, our weekly poll series pitting two web apps against each other. Do you like the change, or are you loyal to the fan page until the end of time?

Cast your vote in the poll below. You have until 12:00 p.m. PT on Friday to cast your ballot. Don’t forget to leave your reasons in the comments!

Faceoff Series: Overall Results

Week 1:
- Mozilla Firefox vs. Google Chrome
- WINNER: Firefox, 4600 votes (Chrome: 3310 votes, Tie: 911 votes)

Week 2:
- Tumblr vs. Posterous
- WINNER: Tumblr, 1809 votes (Posterous: 1496 votes, Tie: 256 votes)

Week 3:
- Pandora vs. Last.fm
- WINNER: Last.fm, 1187 votes (Pandora: 1156 votes, Tie: 122 votes)

Week 4:
- Twitter vs. Facebook
- WINNER: Facebook, 2484 votes (Twitter: 2061 votes, Tie: 588 votes)

Week 5:
- WordPress vs. Typepad
- WINNER: WordPress, 2714 votes (Typepad: 267 votes, Tie: 357 votes)

Week 6:
- Windows 7 vs. Snow Leopard
- WINNER: Windows 7, 3632 votes (Snow Leopard: 3278 votes, Tie: 121 votes)

Week 7:
- TweetDeck vs. Seesmic Desktop
- WINNER: TweetDeck, 3294 votes (Seesmic Desktop: 1055 votes, Tie: 260 votes)

Week 8:
- Microsoft Office vs. Google Docs
- WINNER: Microsoft Office, 1365 votes (Google Docs: 994 votes, Tie: 315 votes)

Week 9:
- Apple iPhone vs. Google Android
- WINNER: Google Android, 3323 votes (Apple iPhone: 1494 votes, Tie: 228 votes)

Week 10:
- AT&T vs. Verizon
- WINNER: Verizon, 1161 votes (AT&T: 538 votes, Tie: 118 votes)

Week 11:
- Google vs. Bing
- WINNER: Google, 2180 votes (Bing: 519 votes, Tie: 97 votes)

Week 12:
- iPod Touch/iPhone vs. Nintendo DS vs. Sony PSP
- WINNER: iPod Touch/iPhone, 704 votes (Sony PSP: 639 votes, Nintendo DS: 482 votes, Tie: 108 votes)

Week 13:
- Digg vs. Reddit vs. StumbleUpon
- WINNER: Digg, 14,762 votes (Reddit: 11,466 votes, StumbleUpon: 2507 votes, Tie: 1032 votes)

Week 14:
- Old versus new Twitter retweets
- WINNER: Old style retweets, 1625 votes (New style retweets: 699 votes, Tie: 227 votes)

Week 15:
- Gmail vs. Outlook
- WINNER: Gmail, 3684 votes (Outlook: 980 votes, Tie: 590 votes)

Week 16:
- Boxee vs. Hulu
- WINNER: Hulu, 626 votes (Boxee: 591 votes, Tie: 106 votes)

Week 17:
- Nexus One vs. iPhone 3GS
- WINNER: Nexus One, 6743 votes (iPhone 3GS: 2818 votes, Tie: 592 votes)

Week 18:
- Foursquare vs. Yelp vs. Gowalla
- WINNER: Foursquare, 1182 votes, (Yelp: 661 votes, Gowalla: 509 votes, Tie: 143 votes)

Week 19:
- AIM vs. GTalk vs. FbChat
- WINNER: GTalk, 2189 votes, (AIM: 1257 votes, FbChat: 511 votes, Tie: 203 votes)

Week 20:
- Music Ownership vs. Music Subscription
- WINNER: Ownership, 533 votes (Subscription: 299 votes, Tie: 237)

Week 21:
- Match.com vs. PlentyofFish
- WINNER: Plenty of Fish, 430 votes (Match.com: 334 votes, Tie: 187 votes)

Week 21:
- Google Buzz vs. Facebook Vs. Twitter
- WINNER: Facebook, 3353 votes (Twitter: 1828 votes, Google Buzz: 1298 votes, Tie: 651 votes)

Week 22:
- HTML5 vs. Adobe Flash
- WINNER: HTML5, 3892 votes (Adobe Flash: 1779 votes, Tie: 660 votes)

Week 23:
- Project Natal vs. PlayStation Move
- WINNER: Project Natal, 1268 votes (PlayStation Move: 668 votes, None: I don’t like motion controllers: 170 votes, None: I prefer the Wii: 150 votes)

Week 24:
- Chatroulette vs. Hot or Not
- WINNER: Chatroulette, 742 votes (Hot or Not: 281 votes, Tie: 99 votes)

Week 25:
- iPad vs. Netbooks
- WINNER: iPad, 3098 votes (Netbook: 1969 votes, Tie: 605 votes)

Week 26:
- Amazon Kindle vs. Apple iBooks
- WINNER: Apple iBooks, 1227 votes (Amazon Kindle: 928 votes, Tie: 118 votes, Neither: 276 votes)

Week 27:
- Next-gen iPhone vs. Droid Incredible
- WINNER: iPhone 4G, 9765 votes (Droid Incredible: 8175 votes, Tie: 1318 votes)

Tags: facebook, Facebook Fan, facebook page, fan, like, poll, web faceoff, Web Faceooff

Making it difficult to “Unlike” a Facebook Page was great for Page owners who wanted to rapidly increase the number of fans they had. One could argue in support of Facebook’s addition of “Unlike” as a way to more accurately reflect a user’s interests. However this is much more of a stretch.

While I’m not sure that we’ll see a massive response from Facebook Page administrators against this change, there’s no doubt that many will be frustrated. Do you support Facebook’s decision to add an “Unlike” link? What do you think the impact will be?

Instead, Facebook prefers that Open Graph objects (which are subsequently turned into Facebook Pages) be a reflection of “real-life things”. As they state within their Open Graph documentation, “users don’t want news articles and other transient content as objects on their profile”. Despite not wanting this, there is clearly an incentive for developers to essentially spam the Open Graph system, something that I’m sure Facebook will create further restrictions around.

While best practices are still being developed for the Facebook Open Graph API, owners of Wordpress blogs can now easily implement Facebook’s like button, with this simple plugin. Go download the Facebook Like plugin now and let us know what you think!

Also, if you’re interested in learning about developing for the social web, come check out Social Developer Summit this June in San Francisco!

Facebook’s Existing Share Button

Facebook’s current Share button which has become somewhat ubiquitous around the web, is a call to action which lets users share content as they find it. For example, at the top of every article on our site we have a share button. When you click on it, you are prompted with a box (as shown below) which enables you to publish the story to your Facebook profile. It’s a great feature and combined with the share count, it’s extremely useful to find out how well an articles is performing on Facebook. Facebook is trying to slowly phase out the share button and instead replace it with the “Like” button however. So how does the “Like” button differ?

The Full Featured “Like” Button

In its simplest form, the Facebook “Like” button lets you acknowledge that you like some piece of content on the web. However the full-featured version of the Like button also includes functionality that enables you to share the content within your profile as well. This added functionality (pictured to the right) essentially replaces the functionality of the Facebook Share button while simultaneously reducing the friction for users to validate a specific piece of content.

Facebook Phases Out Connect

It’s a great tool however as I mentioned earlier, the full-featured Like button requires that you use the latest JavaScript SDK. This is part of a greater shift away from Facebook Connect, something that Bret Taylor confirmed was being phased out during a Q&A session at last week’s f8 event. There are clearly some challenges as part of this shift however. The most obvious is that those who developed sites using the original Facebook Connect libraries also happen to be the most fervent supporters of Facebook.

While some sites (like Techcrunch) have decided to bite the bullet and make the shift, moving over to the new JavaScript SDK requires development time, and the potential of breaking existing functionality. If the site happened to implement Connect-enabled widgets, like the Disqus and the Echo commenting platforms, they’ll need to wait for those developers to upgrade their services to work with the Facebook JavaScript SDK before they implement Facebook’s full-featured Like Button.

In other words, the shift is not a simple one and straight-forward one. While many sites will probably make the shift, others will take much longer to implement the fully functional “Like” button because it requires more development time, something that most companies have limited resources of. While many publishers will do whatever it takes to get Facebook’s new Like button functioning on their sites, the average publisher may find that implementing a fully functional Like button simply isn’t easy enough.

Facebook may be racing to create the leading index of the semantic web there are still hurdles that Facebook will have to entice publishers to overcome. Have you implemented Facebook’s new Like button? Do you plan on implementing it or are you waiting on the sidelines to see how other sites perform with it?

The Open Argument

The best way to explain why the “Like” system is so important is to first explain the basis of the existing web and search engines. Right now, Google uses hyperlinks as the standard for determining the relevance of websites and pages throughout the internet. The more links to a given page, the more important it becomes. Right now however, posting links is still an overly complex process as it requires understanding what “<a href='URL'>this text is important</a>” means.

It also requires understanding how properly formatted HTML will significantly help your search rankings. The entire search optimization industry is built on the premise that the internet is not easy to build on top of. Despite the challenges of understanding how to optimize your site for search engines, the existing search industry is fundamentally based on the “open web”. It’s open in the sense that and search engine can crawl across websites and find the links that are on those pages. As changes are made, the search engines need to reindex those sites.

In Facebook’s new system however, the information is not available for anybody to access. As Alex Iskold accurately states, “The missing bit is that Facebook appears to be the only repository of data in this equation - and that makes the whole offering seriously closed.” Every person (who is also a Facebook user) that visits a site can instantly “like” an article and it doesn’t require knowing how to code a hyperlink in HTML.

Reduction Of Friction Means More Data

In addition to simplifying the process for the majority of users who visit a site (not necessarily easier for publishers, in that a link is still easy for most publishers) to state that a piece of content is a good one, Facebook has also forced publishers to include more structured data about content. While Google can still crawl the RDFa-formatted metadata that publishers must now include, Facebook is locking everybody else out from accessing the massive amount of “Like” data.

While Facebook has effectively reduced the friction for information flowing into their system, they’ve also blocked out the other major players from accessing this data (Google, Yahoo, etc). The act is of course in Facebook’s own interest and despite the protest among the new group of “OpenLike” supporters, it’s likely that this model will work for Facebook. If all goes well, we may find out that the “Like” has in fact become an effective replacement to the modern link.

You can see how this works in the image below. I’ve had CCR listed on my favorite music section for years, and when I used to click on it it would present me with a list of pages related to the artist. This was completed by automatically doing a Facebook search for “CCR” when I clicked on the link. Now, when I click on CCR, I get this page:

We can see that the new page attempts to consolidate the information about CCR into a page, which includes a list of people that “like” the page.  This is really great because it makes the ‘like’ idea the same no matter where you are.  Whether you head to cnn.com and click “like” on an article, or say you “like” CCR in your interests, your basic function as a Facebooker is to have a series of “likes” around the web.  It’s the basic currency of connection between users and media on the web.  It’s a simplified starting point for the ’semantic web’, and I imagine we’ll see more developments as time passes.

In the meantime, enjoy connecting with people easier on Facebook.  It’s really simple now to head over the CCR page, for instance, post a message, and know that it can be seen by everyone on Facebook that likes CCR. Think of it as a meetingplace for any given interest.  That’s a very powerful idea. The site also includes the Wikipedia page, and indicates that the page will soon be open for editing by Facebook users, like a wiki page, with the goal of making it a complete description as edited by the Facebook community.