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Facebook F8 Event Recap From San FranciscoApril 21, 2010 – 3:10 pm |
 Abdul Fattah Ismail |
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Facebook management rolled out a livestream conference this morning from San Francisco called the F8. The event showcased new programs for developers. I’ll list a few that will be relevant for clients of interactive media.
Open Graph
This was the premiere announcement. The Open Graph is Facebook’s vision of connecting all of the disparate social networks such as Yelp, LinkedIn, and Pandora to Facebook where personal tastes and preferences will be filtered for the individual, then connected in the news feed.
Social Plugins
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg described a new social plugin called the “Like” Button. Many of you are familiar with it on the website, but this edition will only use one line of HTML and allow people to share content all over the web with one click. Currently, one must visit the website, click the preferred method of sharing, and choose the network. The “Like” algorithm seeks to eliminate this step entirely. This should increase the volume of sharing and could drive up ROI metrics for sites that implement it.
Social Plugins can show a given user’s Facebook friends’ activity while reading and commenting on partner sites. The button can be installed on any site and instantly be used to voice a Facebook member’s approval of a given item.
The iFrame is an HTML code that allows you to place the “Like” button on your website or blog. The ”activity stream” plugin will show all activities from the Facebook user’s friend list on that third-party site, while a “recommendations” plugin will provide suggested content to users.
Open Graph Protocol
Another big announcement was the Open Graph protocol itself, which Director of Platform Product Bret Taylor calls “a specification for a set of metatags which you can use to mark up your pages to tell us what type of real-world object your page represents.” The 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. This prospect will be a measured tactic for the film industry in gathering information on demographics.
These announcements are still in the beginning phases, but Facebook is taking steps in being the personal connector for the Internet. Investors and marketers alike should be pleased with today’s announcements.
