 |
| Action verbs and objects in the Open Graph, as visualized by Facebook |
Fresh off the holiday break, we find our stocking stuffed again!
Facebook’s weekly Wednesday push of new code can be a mixed bag for developers; sometimes Zuck and Co. hands you some really cool new toys, other times you’ll find yourself stuck with a lump of coal in the form of new bugs and breaking changes. Luckily, this week handed us one hell of a new toy: Open Graph is now publicly available.
At this point, most end users have experienced or at least heard of Timeline. “Open Graph Protocol” makes a bit less sense to the social network layperson. Where’s the sexy interface? How can I describe this in one sentence to my grandmother? How about this for your one-liner:
In the Facebook Social Graph, you used to be able to like or share some things; now you can anything any things, frictionlessly.
At thismoment, our highest priority is to ensure our DEC platform facilitates the most authentic engagement between your customers and your brand. “Liking” a brand on Facebook may demonstrate interest from an end user, but it fails to describe their engagement in any meaningful way. More accurately, that user watched one of your videos, commented on or rated some of your content, or is participating in a contest. It would make sense that, if that user trusts your brand enough to give certain permissions, they could see value in automatically surfacing this activity to their friends’ tickers and newsfeeds… and what’s more likely to pique the curiosity of your friends: the fact that you “Like a movie”, or that you “rated Raiders Of The Lost Ark 4.5 stars” and that you and a few friends “snapped 5 photographs for The Least Healthy Meal You’ve Ever Cooked”?
By the way, I’d just like to take this moment to reserve all rights for a Facebook App called The Least Healthy Meal You’ve Ever Cooked. And yes, “reserving” that “right” could also be published to Facebook via the new Open Graph Protocol. We’ve been playing with Open Graph since it launched its Beta program last October, so I’ve wasted a lot of time thinking of things like this.
The revelation behind Open Graph stems from its flexibility. By allowing any set of verbs (“watch”, “rate”, “kickpunch”, etc.) to be paired with any objects you can think of (movies, photos, kittens, submarines), you can curate how a user’s activity with your brand is published to their Timeline and the rest of Facebook. As these actions are published, the user is not bothered with interstitial dialogs or call-to-action share buttons; their story is their engagement.
Some critics of Open Graph are concerned that the frictionless nature of this publishing represents an invasion of privacy, but users will always have to knowingly opt in for an application before any publishing occurs. If your brand’s page provides enticing opportunities for engagement, users will be happy to grant this permission, much like what’s occurred with certain Open Graph Beta partners such as Spotify, Yahoo! News (who saw a 600% increase in traffic from Facebook since integrating with Open Graph), and The Washington Post (whose Social Reader app has drawn 3.5 million monthly users so far).
thismoment is working overtime to bridge the gap between your brand and optimized Open Graph integration. In the coming months, we’ll introduce features that:
- Allow you to customize which user actions are automatically published
- Build an array of preset actions and objects to sensibly bundle with our DEC theater content
- Fully integrate our best-in-class UGC contest engine so that users can drive traffic and interest around their submissions
- Upgrade all our engagement modules so users can socially act as appropriate
- Upgrade our commenting and posting system to be more socially contextual around specific assets as well as on general page topics
This is a brave new world, and we’re excited to dive in headfirst!
- Jon Eccles
Facebook Technical Lead
