Facebook's (News - Alert) relatively new Timeline layout continues to garner a lot of controversy long after its initial announcement last December, especially since the new layout will soon be mandatory for all users. Due to this relatively huge update, it might be easy to overlook the social networking site's smaller tweaks, particularly a recent update to Facebook's mobile interface which makes clicking the "Like" button a slightly easier task.

The new function, which is currently being rolled out, eliminates the old "+" button which needed to be tapped to access separate "Like" and "Comment" buttons. Instead, items on your Facebook feed will be accompanied with a combined "Like/Comment" bar, making Liking or commenting a one-click affair rather than two. The official statement is that by making it easier to "Like," Facebook will be able to gather more user data, ultimately resulting in a refined sorting algorithm and faster content consumption. In addition, being more streamlined will allow Facebook's more media-rich feeds to compete with Twitter's text-only feed interface.

Again, this might not be as drastic as the Timeline update, but it will affect millions of iPhone and Android (News - Alert) users worldwide as well as other mobile platforms which don't have their own Facebook app and instead use Facebook's mobile website, m.facebook.com.

Personally, I think this is a very logical move, considering the fact that touch screens are not yet quite as accurate as a mouse or a laptop's track pad. It just makes sense to reduce the risk of error since user annoyance can only lead to fewer likes, making it harder for Facebook to track our data. With the new "Like/Comment" bar, the room for error is halved, allowing the user to more easily interact with feed stories, while enabling Facebook's EdgeRank news feed sorting algorithm to more quickly learn what to promote to the user — a win-win solution.