Just what the World Wide Web needs - another social plugin.
The world's largest social network recently launched the Recommendations Bar, which is a new social plug-in that helps people discover articles based on what their friends like and share from a content publisher's site.
The bar appears at the bottom of the screen as someone is reading an article on a participating publisher's website. It features two alternate article recommendations, displays which friends have liked and shared the articles on Facebook, and also includes a like button that enables users to like the article that they are currently reading.
It is also important to note that the Recommendations Bar works similarly to how the like button works - because when someone likes an article with this plugin, a story is published back to their timeline and friends' news feed.
Early tests reveal positive results from sites that have already started using the Recommendations Bar. In fact, according to Facebook's Developer Blog, sites that are leveraging this new plugin have seen three times the click through rate on recommended stories compared to stories that are recommended with the Recommendations Box. Additionally, integration with this social plugin is fairly easy -publishers just need to configure the plug-in, and then copy and paste the code onto their site.
Check out this example: