A couple of us headed on down to the live stream of Facebook’s f8 conference at LBI’s London offices on Wednesday night. It’s debatable whether any of the announcements would come as a surprise to those who've kept a close eye on Facebook's recent movements. It must be acknowledged, however, that there were some pretty cool potential executions for businesses unveiled.
The main three areas discussed were: the Open Graph Protocol, the Open Graph API, and the various social plugins.
The Open Graph Protocol
The Open Graph Protocol. Image Credit: Facebook
Mark Zuckerberg, the co-founder of Facebook, is understandably enamoured with the seemingly esoteric concept of a ‘social graph’. Dubbing it the Open Graph, he proposes a Web whereby people’s interactions with various elements across the Internet are tracked. Facebook had already done this to an extent – users could ‘like’ different charities, celebrities and causes, as well as ‘attend’ events etc. – but only within its own walls.
Now, it’s looking to extend its reach into any Web property that decides to integrate its pages into the Open Graph. Interactions on these external sites will now show up within a user’s Facebook profile and his relevant publishing feeds.
The Open Graph API
Zuckerberg also announced that Facebook is doing away with Facebook Connect. It’s not so much a discarding of Connect as it is an evolution into the Open Graph API. Making it easier for developers to work with the Facebook platform, the advent of the API has a more immediate implication for end users.
From Facebook’s post, “We've adopted OAuth 2.0, a standard we've co-authored with the open community, including representatives from Google, Twitter, Yahoo and others.”
This should put users at ease whenever sharing data and resources stored on one site (in this case Facebook) with another without having to give over any Facebook login details to the other site. Wikipedia has a good summary on OAuth: “It is analogous to using a credit card and signing for a transaction in a restaurant, rather than handing over your ATM card and giving your pin to the waiter.”
2.0 is intended to be a simpler and more fluid version of OAuth – you can read more about it here.
Social Plugins
The simplest way for website owners to integrate their sites into the social graph is through the various Social Plugins available. The most basic of these is the Like Button.
As seen on this screenshot from LOVEFilm, the button lets users ‘like’ a page on any site where the plugin is to be found. This is then published onto your Facebook profile and news feed, with a link directly to the external piece of content (basically, a cross between the old ‘like’ and link posting options available on Facebook). Visiting that piece of content will then show a little box with the profile pics of your friends who have liked it.
Screenshot taken from LOVEFiLM
Some of the other plugins include the Facepile, Activity Stream (a filtered news feed that just contains updates relating to the relevant site) Recommendations and Comments ones. Given that they use data obtained from a user’s relationship with Facebook, and not necessarily your own site, these don’t require users to sign up to any external site in order to be exposed to them.
Browsing the Web in the next few days, you’re bound to see a few of these in action. Many staple sites such as IMDB, Sky and CNN have already implemented these in one form or another, and many others are sure to follow given the simplicity of the integration.
A particular example of what this entails can be found in the collaboration between Facebook and Microsoft to bring you Docs.com. Currently in beta, Docs.com allows users to share their Microsoft Office documents with their Facebook friends, with any new documents being published to the news feed.
Obviously there has been a lot of hyperbole floating around since ‘Zuck’ (as his Facebook buddies refer to him) delivered his keynote from San Francisco on Wednesday. However, the implications that this will have for businesses around the world is undeniable.
Zuckerberg speaks of making the web slicker, more personalised and, ultimately, better. Although privacy alarms are undoubtedly going to be sounding throughout many users’ minds, this is a step-forward through which businesses will be able to get closer to their customers.
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