Synchronizing AddThis widget with Facebook likes?

Question

I'm wondering if it is possible to synchronize the likes between the like button on your actual page & the likes you get on facebook itself!?

For example..... we currently have 15 likes on FB but the AddThis widget on our website only shows 1 like.

So I'm wondering, is there a way you can synchronize the two either with AddThis or ShareThis; doesn't matter the platform, just would prefer it to be synchronized.

I take it if you grab the code from facebook itself rather then use these services then it will be synchronized?

Pitchfork

Add a link to your site / Facebook page? Also ensure that you've read support.addthis.com/customer/portal/articles/… regarding counting likes accurately. – Mackmackay

@RobDiMarco Adding a link to FB page won't do anything unless the user manually likes it in both places. Thanks for the link, I'll check it out! – Pitchfork

I was mentioning a link to your page and site for debugging purposes, not as a solution. Often times this can come down to setting and aligning the Facebook meta tags with those of your page. – Mackmackay

@RobDiMarco Oh sorry, unfortunately the site isn't complete yet & is password protected so can't really post a link atm. – Pitchfork

Answer 1

If you specifically point your like URL fb:like:href="THE URL" to your Facebook page when you call the AddThis like button it should be in sync with the likes there.

Like so:

<a class="addthis_button_facebook_like" fb:like:href="THE URL TO YOUR FACEBOOK PAGE"></a>

For example:

<a class="addthis_button_facebook_like" fb:like:href="http://www.facebook.com/nike"></a>

Because you reference FB Social Plugins in your tags, I can confirm that this is definitly the case for Facebook's own like button.

<div class="fb-like" data-send="false" data-layout="standard" data-width="450" data-show-faces="false" data-colorscheme="light" data-action="like" data-href="http://www.nike.com/"></div>

gives the likes for that site. And:

<div class="fb-like" data-send="false" data-layout="standard" data-width="450" data-show-faces="false" data-colorscheme="light" data-action="like" data-href="http://www.facebook.com/nike"></div>

Gives the likes displaying for their FB page.

Fiberglass

Interesting. Those last two bits of info you gave made some sense to me, so basically the reason they don't "sync" is because the users are "liking" two separate pages? One being our homepage & the other being our facebook page!? So in the fb:like:href you mentioned above, would I put the website URL or the URL to the facebook page? I already have addthis:url="http://www.mydomain.com.au/" to help separate the home page from other parts of the site. – Pitchfork

Answer 2

I believe the issue there is a misunderstanding of the platforms or possible confusion with semantics. Someone can 'like' content on your website via a widget which will share that like to their Facebook profile. Additionally, you can display the amount of likes your website's page has with a Facebook widget or AddThis widget.

However, if you share a page from your website's Facebook page and users can like that, however that will not increment the displayed likes in the widgets aforementioned. Hopefully that clears it up?

Crass

I was essentially trying to convey what Craig said... he just said it better. – Crass