According to Facebook, “The Open Graph API will allow any page on the Web to have all the features of a Facebook Page – users will be able to become a Fan of the page, it will show up on that user’s profile and in search results, and that page will be able to publish stories to the stream of its fans.”
By implementing this new service however, Facebook will become the primary authentication hub for social experiences around the web. This authentication process makes Facebook the center of user identities and the announcement of opening up developer access to emails means Facebook has literally become a wrapper for open identification. Using the APIs, the data will flow back from these sites to Facebook.
“Now that Facebook is willing to share user emails, Facebook Connect will become default signup for most websites.”
Connect is already largely successful. It’s becoming more and more rare to go to a popular site on the web that doesn’t implement it in some way (even if it’s just for commenting). But in many ways, Connect doesn’t go far enough. If Facebook truly wants to be the main hub of social data on the web, it needs more data coming in from more sites, and Open Graph can provide that.
Whether we like it or not, we have to understand what this move means. It impacts users, publishers, competitors and, of course, Facebook itself.
From the developer perspective, it adds to the development process, although many complain the API is tricky and complicated. It seems to be a huge effort from their engineering team.
From the user perspective the major implication is one: privacy.
In my opinion they will be able to control too much and I understand their business practices, but the user should be able to decide what and when to use something.
The Open Graph is a set combination of publisher plugins, semantic markup and a developer API.
Facebook announced simple, RDF-based markup to make the plugins smarter. In a nutshell, the markup enables publishers to say what object is on the page – a movie, a book, an event, a sports team, etc. This automatically enables semantics, that is, an understanding that the user is not just interacting with a webpage, but that he or she is liking a specific kind of thing. More importantly, the markup helps Facebook connect the users across common interests across different websites.
Let’s give it a try.
