Facebook Personalizes The Web

An insight into Facebook’s new vision of the web:

1. An explanation of the new Open Graph Protocol.
2. Why/How the web will be more Personalized and Social.
3. What the significance of the new “Like” button really is.
4. Why Facebook Connect will soon be a thing of the Past.

The recent announcement by Facebook to implement “the Open Graph protocol” across the web has been the first major development since the launch of Facebook Connect over two years ago.

By using Facebook Connect we were dramatically able to increase the brand awareness of our website by using the Facebook network and its tools. But now Mark Zuckerberg has explained how Facebook is ready to take the next step by creating a personalized and social web experience.

In his conference last week Mark Zuckerberg (co-founder of Facebook) claimed that up until now, the web was just been a series of  unstructured links between static pages, but now he wants to create a new type of web, one that involves a greater deal of connectivity and personalisation.

The New Social/Personalized WEB

Facebook now believe that Social platforms should now focus on the web, not social platforms themselves.

Zuckerberg claims that the “Open Graph Protocol” puts people at the center of the web and will provide an instant personalised and social experience for all users involved.

The main aim of the Open Graph Protocol is the theory that you should be able to connect with people from all different walks of life out on the web, not just on Facebook itself.

For example; you don’t have to just “like” bands on Facebook or join a Facebook fanpage, you can now like bands on external websites that will be on the Open Graph Protocol Network and this will automatically go onto your Facebook profile under certain category headings.

Introducing the new “Like” Button?

I have already seen many people complaining or not understanding why Facebook took away the “Fans” on Fanpages. It’s important to understand that this new development was not aimed specifically at fanpages per se, more that it was aimed at promoting pages off Facebook, web pages that have embraced the open graph protocol.

Fanpages are now just part of a much greater scheme of things. Facebook now believe that our identity is defined by things all around the web, not just by things on Facebook.

And by creating the new “like” button amongst many other social plug-in tools (explained later) we will now be able to interconnect with so many other people on the web.

Zuckerberg boasted that he hoped to have over 1 billion like buttons on web after first 24hours of the launch of the Open Graph Protocol.

How Sharing Information is Changing …

In the past Facebook allowed you to integrate website content with via the F share button. It has been seen as an effective tool for syndicating content like newspaper articles or once off pieces of information.

When a URL is shared via Facebook Share we all know that it goes into the streaming sequence in the Facebook user’s homepage, but after 2-3 hours it will be virtually out of sight, depending on how interactive the user is on Facebook.

If I “like” a certain band and regularly visit their webpage. I should be able to receive regular updates from the webpage itself to my Facebook and not have to rely on the Facebook fan page for updates which may or may not even exist.

By implementing this new “like” button it’s not just represented on Facebook…it’s now a long term communication channel between websites and users. When you “like” something anywhere on the web, it will be permanently put on your Facebook  profile Information under a certain category and you will get constant real time updates from that website.

The idea of the Open Graph Protocol is also to connect all these channels into one big network of interests which will result in a more personalised and social experience while browsing the web.

How and Why the Social Graph is implemented?

There are already 30 main partners that have embraced the open graph protocol. These 30 websites cover so many different interests with the aim of bringing together people from all walks of life onto one network.

Some well known ones include:    

1. SKY
   
2. Pandora(music networking site)
3. New York Times
   
4. CNN (news portal)
5. ESPN (news &sports)
   
6. YELP (online urban city guide)
7. IMBD (Movies)

By these sites embracing the Open Graph Protocol we will begin to see a lot of Facebooks tools and widgets more frequently on them. This will be done by a series of Social Plug ins which will help Connect all of these Partner sites into one big network of interests for individuals.All of these sites can now publish real time updates to all the people who have connected .

We will also now be able to get different, more personalized content, on searches we do on certain websites like Yelp, depending on our interests and what we “like” across the network.

How? – Here’s an example:

• YELP is an online urban city guide. As I have mentioned, now websites on the Open Graph Protocol (above) are allowed store a users search data for as long as they want.
• So, if I log on to YELP.com and search for a restaurant, it’s going to bring back results to me which will not only be effected by what my friends find interesting or “like” but it’s also going base those results on my interests and likes all over the web that now appear on my Facebook Profile.
• Information will be taken from my Facebook profile and pervious searches to help give me more of what I’m looking for. (Or at least, what they might think I’m looking for).
• Thus, bringing a more personalized feel to the web and a different set of results for different users.  How will this impact on SEO? Does this limit what we will be able to search for? Only time will tell. (more examples to follow)

The new Social Plug in’s for Websites:

1. If you have never even been to a website before, you can now see what sort of activity your friends have been doing on that site.

For example, which articles they “like” most. This is a great way to get people to be more interactive with websites that they may not be too familiar with. If they’re friends like its content then there must be something there for them too!

2. The Recommendations plug in is great way for sites to deliver different pieces of content to different users across different websites  based on what their likes and interests are all over the Social Graph.

This way each website seems to feed off another by providing more and more information about an individual user. Publishers can show different users different recomendations to browse based on their “likes” on their Facebook Profile.

3. The Activity feed from Facebook can now be on these websites too. So you can see what your friends are doing without having to go onto Facebook itself. It’s clear that Facebook is trying to bring all the useful functions of its trade to external sites, so we don’t have to keep relying on Facebook itself.

4. There’s also a “social bar”, which can provide “an all-in-one social experience” with a “like” button, Facebook chat, and friends list information that seems to be very much in the league of Google Friend Connect or the Meebo chat toolbar. You can stay in contact with friends while browsing different sites on the Open Graph Protocol.

All of these Social Plug in’s are really easy to install, most of them being just a few lines of HTML code. There is no need for downloads or anything that would take more then a couple of minutes effort.

Open Graph Protocol – More Good examples of how it is implemented!

The best way to describe the plug-in’s is to use examples of what’s already out there:

1. CNN: If you visit this well known news website you can see that there is a Facebook activity feed now on the right hand site of the page. This embraces the idea of bringing the Facebook news fee to individual WebPages. You can see what activity your friends have done on this site.You can also see different articles, which your friends have liked or recommended that you read.

This screen grab is taken off the CNN homepage:

This creates much more engagement on websites and of course the more people who “like” certain things on websites, the more defined their personality becomes on this new web structure.

By having the news feed on external websites there is less incentive to log onto the Facebook Website itself.

2. ESPN Sports: can publish updates to all Facebook users to give them real time updates to all people connected via Facebook to ESPN – The open graph gives a long term communication channel.

3. IMBD: the Amazon-owned Internet Movie Database is using the Open Graph Protocol to mark up pages for each individual movie.

Hitting the “like” button on an IMDB movie page will automatically add that movie to the “Favorite Movies” section of a Facebook user’s profile.

4. Pandora: For a new user of this site, when you log on it will start playing music form bands that you liked all across the web. It will show you which bands your friends like too. This is the kind of social and personal experience that Facebook is now looking for.

If we can now promote any webpage through Facebook, is this the beginning of the end of the Facebook Fanpage and Facebook Connect?

Will we see more websites bringing Facebook to you, instead of you logging on to the Facebook site?

If websites on the Open Graph can store user details for as long as they want, resulting in personalized search, what are the implications for SEO?

Will Google be thinking about integrating Facebook in their search results pages so that you can see what you friends like and recommend?

Would this be a positive step, or does too much personalization remove the opportunities of finding new ideas/people on the web?

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