What is Facebook’s Open Graph?
Facebook recently announced the launch of their “Open Graph” platform. The open graph allows Facebook to connect the disparate corners of the Web that other social sites are building. “Yelp is mapping out the part of the graph that relates to small businesses. Pandora is mapping out the part of the graph that relates to music,” Facebook’s founder Mark Zuckerberg said, “If we can take these separate maps of the graph and pull them all together, then we can create a Web that’s smarter, more social, more personalised, and more semantically aware.”
All well and good, but what does it mean? What it means is that Facebook are angling to become the standard in social personalisation for everything you do online. As defined by Mashable the Open Graph will “allow sites and apps to share information about users in order to tailor offers, features and services to each one’s interests and tastes — even if that individual has never visited the site before”.
For example, visiting sites such as IMDB and CNN you will now see integrated “like” buttons (you can also see one at the top right of this blog). Clicking the like button links the content to your Facebook profile so that you become connected to other people who “like” similar things. These social plug ins mean that by adding a few lines of code to your site, you give visitors the ability to engage with both your website and your Facebook presence without a cumbersome log in process. Additionally by aggregating this information, the Open Graph will allow websites to personalise offers and content based on their visitors particular interests.
This is yet another indicator of the importance of optimising your brand’s Social Media engagement. Early adopters will likely see benefits while those who cannot or will not adapt may be left in the dust. If you would like to discuss implementing Facebook social plug ins on your website, please tweet, email or call us on 0114 279 7779.
Image source: Mashable
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Darren Bristow
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Rebecca Jesson
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Rebecca Jesson
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David Sealey
