Facebook on Wednesday announced a new approach to connecting and sharing with friends online. The latest version of the Facebook Platform aims to put people at the center of the web via social plug-ins.
“We are making it so all web sites can work together to build a more comprehensive map of connections and create better, more social experiences for everyone,” said Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg. “We have redesigned Facebook Platform to offer a simple set of tools that sites around the web can use to personalize experiences and build out the graph of connections people are making.”
Extending ‘Like’
One of the new features is the “Like” option. Just as people can show their friends they’re interested in their status updates, photos and links by clicking “Like,” they can now “Like” popular web sites beyond Facebook. “Like” or “Recommend” buttons are now found at the bottom of sites like NYTimes.com, IMDb, CNN.com and NHL.com. Currently, Facebook has inked deals with more than 75 web sites.
Taking that notion a step further, the Activity Feed now displays the actions a user’s friends are taking on a web site. People who are logged into Facebook and visit CNN.com, for example, are now automatically showing their friends what articles and topics they are sharing, recommending and commenting on.
Sterling Market Intelligence principal Greg Sterling said this is Facebook’s effort to make the web more social — and personal — by making it simpler to integrate the Facebook log-in, tools and user data into third-party web sites.
“There’s also reciprocal sharing of data and user behavior back to Facebook and, in some circumstances, more broadly throughout the Open Graph — network of web sites — that Facebook is seeking to facilitate with these new tools,” Sterling said.
The Privacy Play
Zuckerberg stressed that none of a user’s personal…