Facebook Open Graph: Pros and Cons

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With an endeavor to pull its brain child to the pinnacle of success, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s co-founder and CEO has announced his plan to turn the web around Facebook. In the f8 conference, California, Zuckerberg called the shift “the most transformative thing we’ve ever done for the web.” Facebook will implant its plug-in on every square inch of the Internet.

The new social paradigm called “Open Graph” will make it easier for people to share information about their likes and dislikes all over the internet. This will be possible with the help of “like” buttons. Like buttons will be scattered on sites all over the internet. If a person visits a site and click the button to indicate that they “like” something, that information will be shared among the person’s Facebook friends.

Facebook has launched Open Graph in collaboration with New York Times, Yelp, the music site Pandora, ESPN and the Internet Movie Database. CNN.com. This means if you visit Pandora, you might get to know what are the favorite bands of your Facebook friends, provided that they are using Facebook instant personalization.

The Social Plugins and Open Graph announcements have started to roll out. The business reviews site Yelp, will be bringing Facebook users’ friends’ Yelp activity to personalize the service. Such a feature will allow a person to “check in” the best restaurant of a city and will let his/her Facebook friends know about his/her whereabouts.

When most of the users are scared about their privacy not being preserved with Facebook’s newest feature, the company does not seem much worried about it. Open Graph, as told by Facebook, will not make private information public, rather it will make public information more public.

Con

Facebook Open Graph will surely help you more socializing. But, you may not like to share all your information with your Facebook friends. There must be certain degree of freedom, given to a user so that he/she can feel free to indulge in social networking. With “Open Graph” I am sceptical, whether Facebook will care much about “Privacy”.

Conclusion

This all seems to be a rock-solid marketing approach taken by the most popular microblogging site. We’ll see whether “Open Graph” is appreciated by the users or not. Feel free to share your opinion in the comment section.