why OpenGraph from Facebook matters

In 2011 Facebook announced during the F8 developer conference that they would launch a new version of its interaction mechanism for developers with the Facebook platform. What they announced and and launched is the new version of the OpenGraph protocol which can be used by developers to code applications that work with Facebook and interact with Facebook. 

In previous versions of OpenGraph the aim of Facebook was to introduce the "like" button to other websites and loosely integrate other websites and applications to it you will now see that with the next version of OpenGraph applications will be more and more integrated with the Facebook website. On one hand this is a great way to build applications for startup companies as Facebook will provide them a great platform and a large set of functions and options to work with information and user interactions on a known and familiar platform however the downside is that all those new companies are depending on the choices Facebook will make in the future and the success of Facebook. No Facebook and the companies depending on it will also stop existing. However looking at the things Facebook is offering and the future plans of Facebook, it is a bet however a bet that can be made quite safely.

As stated the new version of the Facebook Open Graph protocol is currently in beta and it is not yet available to all however a number of companies is currently getting live with it and will be showing it off. We can expect to see more and more application starting to use it. You can see which companies are using it at the timeline apps page on the facebook site. Just to name a couple of the applications/companies/sites available; spotify.com, pinterest.com, tripadvisor, Yahoo News, FAB.com and others.

Carl Sjogreen is director of product management, Facebook Platform. His team is building many of the new features, from Timeline to Open Graph to Ticker and he gave a interview to Robert Scoble from building43.com which you can see below:



On the same subject Robert Scoble has a talk with Mike Kerns the head of personalization at Yahoo and who is responsible for the integration of Yahoo and Facebook applications and who has been using the new Open Graph protocol to do so.