a few weeks back facebook announced the release of the graph API that essentially replaces the facebook connect service. so what does this mean?
facebook says that the graph API will make it easier to access all of the features of a facebook page, while also enabling a more personalized web experience. looking forward this could mean that facebook.com as a destination becomes obsolete since all of the features that you now access on your facebook page will travel around the web with you. facebook wants to become the hidden platform that powers the social web. if every site you visited had facebook features customized to the site experience why would one ever go to facebook.com.
behind the API are two new modules, open graph and social plugins. think of open graph as a big repository of data that you have shared via facebook directly or any third party site that you accessed via your facebook ID. it could be the hobbies listed on your profile page or it could be an artist that you 'liked' when you were logged into pandora via your facebook ID. open graph will allow third party sites and apps to share this information with each other - so that the next time you login to amazon.com it knows that you 'liked' an artist and immediately hits you with related recommendations. at some point soon amazon will also use the same info to further personalize and customize the email offers it sends to you.
the like button seems to be one stand out feature right now. every article, image, just about any piece of content where it makes sense could have a simple like option that feeds back into open graph and provides rich data about you that is available to brands, companies, just about anyone who you give access to. imagine how companies like yelp, citysearch, amazon, netflix, pandora, ebay and so on could all collect and use this data together.
this is but one small example of what facebook means when it discusses customizing and personalizing your web experience - facebook's vision is that everything online is linked and that they are the glue that holds it all together. it is a real interesting proposition that has hugely positive implications if it is used in the right way, but lets face it even if the word 'open' is used in the name of this platform, it's not meant in the conventional 'open source' sort of way....facebook is a business, a big business and is out to own this thing and i'm not sure how i feel about that.
how about for you? is the benefit of a personalized web experience worth the trade off of sharing all this data with facebook? is facebook.com becoming a thing of the past with this announcement?