Facebook Introduces the Open Graph
April 23rd, 2010 by Braeden Flaherty
This week Facebook has announced a powerful set of tools to extend the reach of social media beyond their own domain and across the entire web. You may have already noticed the ubiquitous "Like" button appearing in new places. This allows users to contribute to their Facebook profile without ever leaving the page they are experiencing. When users stumble across content they enjoy and click "Like" it will both publish a link to the content on their Facebook profile and publish their name and link to their profile on the external page.
As a Facebook user, its up to you if you want to participate and you can customize how interactive/intrusive your social network experience is outside of Facebook by changing your privacy settings. But as a marketer there is no reason not to give your clients another tool to promote your website. The new widgets can be added to just about every type of content: blog posts (Wordpress and Drupal), real estate listings, vacation rentals, events, products and specials can all be promoted by your visitors to their friends without any interruption to their browsing experience.
Even cooler, the data obtained by all this liking is captured by Facebook and shared via API. Pretty soon we may see the search button become obsolete on many sites. Why force your clients to search when you already know what they like? Let's say you're a vacation rental manager and your website is visited by someone who has been taking annual Hawaiian vacations and been staying in 4 bedroom beachfront homes, why not serve some suggestions of properties that fit their profile? Pretty soon your entire web experience may be centered around your own interests and likes without you having to spell it out.
Anyone doubting that it will catch on? Facebook estimated that over 1 BILLION "Like" buttons had been added within 24 hours of the announcement.
Contact us today to learn about custom Facebook widget implementation options. Oh, and if you enjoyed this post, you know what to do.
- Braeden Flaherty
Director of Customer Service
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Comments
nice post braeden - i agree it's exciting times for FB, although you may want to rethink the privacy implications this will have for you as a user. (if you care about that kind of stuff).
Thanks Georger, I tried to
Thanks Georger, I tried to skirt the user privacy implications as much as possible and focus on the potential upside as a business. I thought the NYT had a pretty good summation of the risks today and steps to avoid them: http://gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/23/how-to-opt-out-of-facebooks-instant-personalization/ They certainly aren't making it easy to opt out and probably risk alienating some of their users given how much the Open Graph idea conflicts with Facebook's original closed, fairly-protected design. For the individuals that are comfortable using the new tools I think it can lead to a very cool personalized web experience. As long as there are users buying into it businesses may as well leverage the tools.
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