Facebook hosted its annual
f8 developer conference with many speculating beforehand on the new features Facebook would announce. Facebook’s focus has always been about connecting people and helping them share information with others. At this year’s conference, Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, talked about the company’s shift toward offering users a more “social and personalized experience everywhere online”. Facebook has worked with three partners –
Microsoft Docs,
Yelp and
Pandora – to kick off an initiative they call ‘personalized experiences’.
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. 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.
The new features that Facebook introduced are:
Open Graph – The new platform allows user information to be shared via other websites and apps. With partnering sites such as Yelp and Pandora, various offers, features and services can be tailored based on one’s interests and tastes and then shared with your social graph. For instance, when you sign into Facebook and then visit Yelp, you are automatically connected without having to sign in again – even if you have never visited the site before. Yelp has access to any information you have made publicly available on Facebook and will use this information when recommending things like restaurants, products and services.
What does this mean for user’s privacy? Facebook hasn’t made any significant changes to their privacy policy after implementing Open Graph. It is ultimately the users’ responsibility to check their privacy settings and determine what information they want public, not only on Facebook but partnering sites as well.
“Like” or “Recommended” Button – Facebook has developed social plugins that brands can add to their websites and apps that link back to Facebook. When a visitor sees something on a brand’s website that they like, they can click the “Like” button and information about what they like is automatically shared with their Facebook friends. In turn, the button will also show which of their friends already liked that same product, feature or piece of information. For instance, Pandora gives station suggestions on bands and artists you and your friends liked on Facebook and the web.
Levi’s has already integrated this feature on its own website. If you go to Levis.com and enter the Friends Store, you can “like” a pair of jeans and see which of your Facebook friends have done the same. Levi’s created and posted a video to
youtube to demonstrate how the Like feature works.
I tried the feature myself and it’s pretty easy to use. I browsed the Friends Store and selected a few items of interest.
Because I was already logged in to Facebook whatever I “liked” from the Friends Store was automatically shared as an update to my profile.
Facebook users can already become a fan of a brand through the site’s fan pages; however this feature goes one step further and allows users to share their opinions via Facebook on specific products or services they come across on the web. With this tool, brands such as Levi’s can offer a new way to shop that is an experience designed to be shared.
Docs.com – Facebook partnered with Microsoft to launch
Docs.com. The site allows Facebook users to create, edit and share Microsoft Office documents with their friends on Facebook. Documents created using Docs.com will appear in Facebook feeds just like status updates. The site is still in beta; if you are interested in trying it, you need to sign up on the waiting list. Docs.com will notify you through Facebook when the service is available. This could be Microsoft and Facebook’s attempt to compete with Google, however Google Docs already has a lead in the market. Until Docs.com is available to all, it is difficult to judge how well its features compare to those available in Google Docs.
With these new tools, Facebook is offering users the ability to shape their online experiences and make them more social. By connecting their sites to a service their customers already use, participating partners and brands have the opportunity to improve customer engagement and attract prospects. Facebook recently
announced that already 50,000 sites across the web have implemented the social plugins for these tools. However, Facebook’s success at personalizing social experiences for its 400 million users comes down to how quickly they begin participating.