Facebook is integrating its ‘Like’ button within third-party mobile apps, as it continues its attempts to increase engagement and discovery on the social network. In a blog post, Facebook says that mobile apps such as Instagram and Foursquare can integrate their proprietary buttons with Facebook’s open graph, so users’ activity is automatically displayed on Facebook. App users must explicitly opt-in to sharing their activity within a participating app, something that is likely to please user privacy advocates in light of Facebook’s past grapples with sensitive user data. The move is illustrative of Facebook’s focus on mobile as its primary platform going forward as more and more of its near-1bn members access the social network via a mobile device.

The social network is hoping for a spike in mobile engagement with the Integration, as the use and popularity of mobile apps continue to rise. Engagement leads to ad dollars, and Facebook will be keen to further its reputation as a crucial traffic referrer for mobile content producers and partners, as it has on the web. Facebook’s Like button was integrated into external websites in February 2009 and has since enabled its users to share and recommend content to online friends across the web, driving both traffic for websites and user activity data for the social network. Facebook will now be able to do the same within native mobile apps, as well as mobile web-based apps.

The move furthers Facebook’s effort to boost engagement on both mobile and desktop through its far-reaching API system, the Open Graph. Launched in September last year, it has enabled a raft of media and content partners to deeply integrate with Facebook, enabling its users to share their external activity on the social network. While many of these apps have already integrated with Facebook’s mobile property, it is not to the same extent as on desktop. As Facebook repositions itself as a mobile-first firm, the format is a priority. Recent research by comScore claims that Google is attracting more users to its mobile properties than Facebook, with 94m visitors in March versus the social network's 78m, illustrating the need to boost interaction via mobile as the social network continues its attempts to monetise its popularity on connected devices.

Full analysis to follow.