Facebook users who click the "like" button for a brand may soon find their action transmitted onto their friends’ pages as a "sponsored story" paid for by advertisers.
Currently, there is no "opt-out" feature which means that there is no way users can decline Facebook’s new advertising format.
The social networking site said this lets advertisers promote word-of-mouth recommendations that people make on the site.
The new, promoted posts would keep the same privacy settings that the original posting had.
The promoted content will appear on the right side of member’s home pages where other Facebook ads and friends’ requests appear.
Other actions that are being turned into sponsored stories are check-ins, action within custom applications and page posts involving the user’s favourites.
Other social networking sites such as Twitter have similar advertising formats. The microblogging site’s "promoted tweets," are Twitter posts paid for by advertisers to show up in search results and on top of trending topics on the site.
