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Facebook Open Graph And What It Means To You

Haven't quite digested the implications of Facebook's Open Graph initiative for you, your community, your company, and the industry at large? Join the club. According to ReadWriteWeb, the initiative -- which represents an "aggressive move to weave the social net on top of the existing Web" -- cannot be ignored. Indeed, Facebook's "ambition is to kill off its competition and use 500 million users to take over entire Web."



Blogger Jeff Jarvis says the move offers few benefits to users, while it gives Facebook too much control. Facebook, he said, "figured out what would benefit it most and then we get a few dividends: we get to tell our friends what we like and find out what our friends like ... But in the process, Facebook controls our identities with no relationship to our true identities online -- that list above from email addresses to blogs to photos ... Indeed, I'd argue that Facebook separates us from our true identities, for that is in Facebook's favor; it gives Facebook control."



Under the headline, "Did Like Just Replace The Link?" All Facebook says: "The best way to explain why the 'Like' system is so important is to first explain the basis of the existing web and search engines." In short, the "Like" button dramatically simplifies the process, which will therefore accelerate sharing of all kinds.



For publishers, "any site that already has social networking built in has to decide to abandon that before jumping into the Facebook Open Graph," speculates ReadWriteWeb. The even worse problem is the ownership of ratings and comments ... Nobody seriously thinks that users are going to be rating through Facebook and then through the site again."



The Guardian writes that its head of social media, Meg Pickard, "takes the sensible view that publishers need to decide how much time to spend feeding and editing for this new distribution beast, versus how much time is spent on making their own content and experience better ... In most cases the choice is not either/or, but both."



The Guardian also characterizes ReadWriteWeb's warning to embrace Facebook or die as "undoubtedly overdoing the threat and the opportunity."



Still, in ReadWriteWeb's humble opinion: "Twitter, Google, Yahoo, MySpace, AOL, eBay, Amazon and others, except for Microsoft, should be really worried," adds ReadWriteWeb. "It appears that Microsoft is content with just partnering with Facebook, perhaps rightly so ... Possibly a Bing deal is in the works, which would make a lot of sense ... For all other players on the Web, the worry is that Facebook is trying to close the loop in exclusively owning user eyeballs."

Read the whole story at ReadWriteWeb et al. »

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