Facebook is in business. They make money from your activity within their network and also when they send you to other web sites. So your time and energy is what is driving their business.

One of the things they’re making money doing at your expense, the “Like” button, can be seen just about everywhere on the web. When you click it, you are adding yourself as a sales prospect to yet another online marketing database.

Facebook wants users to click the “Like” button for advertisers who are paying to have those “Likes” in their own database. Why would Facebook want this to happen? Well, advertisers will continue to pay advertising fees to Facebook month after month if the database continues to grow. If nobody is clicking “Like” (adding themselves to the marketing database for the advertiser), then there would be no reason to keep paying Facebook for strategic placement (ads).

If you look twice (or just look once, really slowly) at the space below the user photo above (from a friend on Facebook), you can clearly see that the “Like” button isn’t for the photo, but for an advertiser. That ad is under a very large number of photos uploaded by Facebook users. Imagine how many people have clicked the button because they really did like the photo, only to later get ongoing marketing  messages injected into their Facebook News Feed. Most people will never unsubscribe from these messages.

How do you “Like” that?