Facebook's fond of FriendFeed's 'Like' button

An instructional video posted recently by Facebook includes a link that will look familiar to anyone who has ever used the social content aggregation service FriendFeed: a "Like" button.

The video, which describes how to publish feed stories using Facebook Connect, shows the familiar "Like" button tucked between the "Add Comment" and "Read More" buttons. The button, which was spotted by an AllFacebook reader, doesn't seem to be appearing on other Facebook videos. As VentureBeat points out, the video probably includes beta properties for testing purposes, and while it makes sense that Facebook would be working on a "Like" link, it's possible Facebook will never launch it.

But as AllFacebook's Nick O'Neill points out, "It's interesting to see Facebook duplicating some of the features provided by FriendFeed..."

An old adage says that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and if the function is ever launched, it would join a growing list of FriendFeed flattery.

In May, Facebook began allowing users to import YouTube, StumbleUpon, Pandora, Hulu, Last.fm, and Google Reader into the social network's Mini-Feed--similar to a service offered by FriendFeed.

Also, Facebook's commenting system for news items is very reminiscent of FriendFeed.

So will Facebook "like" the function enough to roll it out to everyone? We probably won't have to wait long to see.