Last night Facebook announced a new feature that increases the promotional capabilities provided by news feed stories. The new feature is called an “action link” and according to Facebook, the feature “is a call to action for the user to take within your application, directly from a Feed story. For example, it could be a call to buy an album or a book, or write a review. The URL encoded within the action link takes the user to the appropriate place to perform the action.”

This is an interesting feature which most definitely provides a new channel for developers to promote features on external sites including generating affiliate revenue. Imagine seeing that your friend just read a book on Visual Bookshelf with a link to go purchase it right then. The version that Facebook displays (pictured below) is a notification that your friend just purchased a CD (similar to the book version I just mentioned).

There are links to listen, review, and purchase the CD. I definitely see this as a great opportunity to drive users to action. This is a great feature and definitely think developers should quickly find a way to take advantage of the new action links.