Tune in to any technology blog this week and you’ll see one word popping up again and again: Facebook. At f8, Facebook’s conference for developers and entrepreneurs held yesterday, founder Mark Zuckerberg had plenty to reveal about the future of his social network, which is about to hit 500 million visitors per month.
Facebook’s developer blog outlines the biggest changes, the first of which is the ability to add “Like” buttons and other social plugins to any website. timesonline.co.uk describes this as Facebook’s “plan to control how you see the web”. Zuckerberg puts a different spin on it, writing “we are making it so all websites can work together to build a more comprehensive map of connections and create better, more social experiences for everyone.”
Along with social plugins, Facebook is introducing something called the “Open Graph Protocol”, which turns websites into objects people can add to their Facebook profiles. “When a user establishes this connection by clicking Like on one of your Open Graph-enabled pages, you gain the lasting capabilities of Facebook Pages: a link from the user’s profile, ability to publish to the user’s News Feed, inclusion in search on Facebook, and analytics through our revamped Insights product,” Facebook’s developer blog explains.
According to mashable.com, the launch of the Open Graph will mean the end of the now-familiar Facebook Connect, which is used across multiple real estate websites.
Facebook’s latest changes are mainly aimed at developers, but what does it all mean for users? Will the changes have an effect on privacy? Zuckerberg addresses these questions in the following video:
Of course, no change to one of the world’s biggest online social networks is going to please every single user. But if Zuckerberg is worried about the naysayers, he isn’t letting on, finishing his blog post with these words:
“We look forward to a future where all experiences are this easy and personalised, and we’re happy today to take the next important step to get there.”
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