Facebook has now built deeper, stronger pipes that will pull in more information from partner sites and push more social-media capabilities out to them in turn--Open Graph, which integrates third-party data into Facebook in a far more complex way than its Facebook Connect predecessor; Social Plugins, which add a smattering of social features to those publishers; and the revamped Graph API, which overhauls Facebook's platform code to make it simpler and more flexible.
One of the promotional materials for an additional F8 debut, the nascent RFID-based project called Facebook Presence, quoted the "Back to the Future" line "where we're going, we don't need roads." That's sort of ironic, because the truth is that Facebook knows the social Web is in need of roads, so as to speak, and it has anointed itself as the builder and operator of that infrastructure.
This will affect everyone from the developers who filled the San Francisco Design Center Concourse's halls for CEO Mark Zuckerberg's keynote address, to digital publishers and other social-media sites, to each of Facebook's 400 million-plus members. It's also likely going to mean some changes in direction at the other companies that have built or are building tools that also want to lay the groundwork for a lasting social Web--and by this, I mean Twitter and Google.
Indeed, many of the concepts that Facebook executives unveiled aren't totally new ideas. They borrow, at least in theory, from everything from Google Friend Connect to Meebo's chat bar to Digg's thumbs-up buttons. But Facebook, once again, is using its melange of marketing, engineering, and design expertise, which draws the occasional comparison to Apple's, to pitch a subtle message to the developers and publishers of the Web: they can do it, but we can do it better. And people are buying it.
cnet.com
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