This was actually intentional, although I realize I didn’t give a detailed explanation, so I’ll do that now.
There were several problems with the old facebook like button, primarily that it had a massive impact on page load times and didn’t fit aesthetically with the rest of the FSML plugin. Additionally it was usually too wide or too narrow compared with the rest of the icons and couldn’t be resized. The other issue was that it was an inconsistent user experience sine the like button immediately like the page but the subscribe and follow buttons go to a page on twitter/youtube where you confirm the action.
To fix all of these issues, I implemented a customized version of the like button. It doesn’t load until you click the like button (so it only loads if the user needs it), and then it brings up a box containing the actual like button, number of likes, and additional information such as thumbnails of friends who’ve like the page. Since the follow and subscribe buttons don’t show the count directly either, this is the most consistent UI in my opinion.
But, if you have any alternate ideas I’m open to considering them, I just had to do something to fix all of the issues (especially page load and general ugliness) from the old one.
