by Lesa Seibert, President, Xstreme Media
Now, more than ever, business owners need to be aware of the power of Facebook and establish a presence there. Facebook recently announced several visionary and aggressive initiatives that are combining the social net with the existing Web. What is the big initiative? Full support of Open Graph. Every business owner should look at using these tools on their website, especially if you have a B to C type business.
What is Open Graph? Open Graph is a set combination of publisher plugins, semantic markup and a developer API. The three aspects of this platform (the Facebook API, RDF-Based markup and plugins), bring together an almost realized vision of a fully social, personalized and semantic Web. While the developer API and Facebook's support of semantic markup will appeal to developers, Facebook has made Open Graph easily accessible through plugins. Social plugins provided by facebook enable your site to create more personal, social experiences for visitors with just one line of HTML. If you use these plugins, you should inform your site visitors that Facebook social plugins are in use. Coupled with the RDF-based markup, these plugins will be smarter and richer.
The new Faceook API is awesome, with easy to access user information, such as profile data, friends, etc. For example, our company profile information can be accessed like this: http://graph.facebook.com/XstremeMedia. The authentication is based on a protocol that makes it simple to connect but also to prompt for permissions to access user information.
Now, more than ever, business owners need to be aware of the power of Facebook and establish a presence there. Facebook recently announced several visionary and aggressive initiatives that are combining the social net with the existing Web. What is the big initiative? Full support of Open Graph. Every business owner should look at using these tools on their website, especially if you have a B to C type business.
What is Open Graph? Open Graph is a set combination of publisher plugins, semantic markup and a developer API. The three aspects of this platform (the Facebook API, RDF-Based markup and plugins), bring together an almost realized vision of a fully social, personalized and semantic Web. While the developer API and Facebook's support of semantic markup will appeal to developers, Facebook has made Open Graph easily accessible through plugins. Social plugins provided by facebook enable your site to create more personal, social experiences for visitors with just one line of HTML. If you use these plugins, you should inform your site visitors that Facebook social plugins are in use. Coupled with the RDF-based markup, these plugins will be smarter and richer.
The new Faceook API is awesome, with easy to access user information, such as profile data, friends, etc. For example, our company profile information can be accessed like this: http://graph.facebook.com/XstremeMedia. The authentication is based on a protocol that makes it simple to connect but also to prompt for permissions to access user information.
Highlights of Facebook Social Plugins
- Like Button - The Like button lest users share pages from your site back to their Facebook profile with one click. The code that you need to integrate is fro an iframe and can be placed very easily. You can customize how the link to the Liked site appears on ta user's FAcebook profile by adding meta data for title, site name and even an image.
- Activity Feed - The Activity Feed plugin shows users what their friends are doing on your website through Likes and comments. If a user is logged into Facebook the plugin will automatically be personalized to highlight content from their friends. The plugin is available via a simple iframe code that can be placed on a Web page.
- Recommendations - The Recommendations plugin gives users personalized suggestions for pages on your site that they might like. To generate the recommendations, the plugin considers all the social interactions with URL's from your site. For logged-in Facebook users, the plugin will give preference to and highlight objects their friends have interacted with. You specify a site for which to show recommendations.
- Like Box - The LikeBox enables users to Like your Facebook Page and view its stream directly on your website. In addition to giving Facebook Page owners the ability to attract and gain Likes directly from their website, users can see how many others already Like the page and which of thier friends Like it too. Users can also read recent posts from the page and Like the page without needing to visit Facebook. You are able to specify the height and width, number of connections, and choose whether or not to display the profile stream for the public.
- Login with Faces - It makes sense that users are more likely to sign up for your site if they know that their friends of colleagues have done so already. The Login with Faces plugin shows profile pictures of the user's friends that have already signed up for your site. Site owners can specify the maximum number of rows of faces to display along with a login button.
- Comments - The Comments Box easily enables your users to comment on your site's content - whether it's for a Web page, article, photo or other piece of content. Then the user can share the comment on Facebook on their Wall and in their freinds' streams.
- Live Stream - The Live Stream plugin lets website or application visitors share activity and comments in real time. The Live Stream Box works best when you are running a real-time event; like live streaming video for concerts, speeches or web-casts, live Web chats, webinars, etc.
