From Wikipedia: A tributary is a stream or river which flows into a main stem (or parent) river. Facebook wants every site on the web to be a tributary. And it wants to be the main river.
Today, amid the hoopla that Facebook was once again making changes to its site which may or may not make things more difficult for developers, something big was largely overlooked. To me, the more interesting thing was the new API Facebook briefly unveiled: The Open Graph API.
To say details are vague at this point is being overly generous. But, the key idea is in place, and was presented today. Basically, the Open Graph API is a way for Facebook to allow other companies, sites, services, etc to interact with Facebook without having to create a dedicated Facebook Page. Big deal, you might think β isn’t that what Connect is? Yes, to an extent, but it would seem that the idea here is to go way past that.
With the Open Graph API, Facebook wants to allow anyone to take their own site and essentially wrap it in a Facebook blanket. This doesn’t necessarily mean in a visual way, but rather that these sites which use the APIs will be able to replicate many of the core Facebook functionality on their own sites. Facebook isn’t being more specific at this time about what elements would be included in this, and when I spoke briefly to new Director of Product Management for Platform, Bret Taylor (fresh from the FriendFeed acquisition), about it afterwards, he made it very clear that many of the details are still being ironed out and thought up.
Still, it’s not hard to imagine what this will be. During his presentation, Facebook’s Head of Platform, Ethan Beard, laid out the Open Graph as essentially a Facebook Fan Page for any site on the web. So you can imagine that you might be able to create a Facebook-style Wall to include on your site, but able to update your statuses from your site, leave comments, like items, etc. Again, it’s like a Facebook Page, but it would be on your site. And you can only include elements you want, and leave out others.
The idea is to keep expanding Facebook’s social graph, and more importantly, it’s social reach. As I’ve described it so far, this API doesn’t sound like much of a tributary. But it is. Using the APIs, the data will also flow back from these sites to Facebook. Even if the site/brand doesn’t have a Facebook Fan Page, elements created on this page by other visitors will be sent back to Facebook and placed on their Walls or in their Streams, etc.
This is a very smart play by Facebook (assuming they can pull it off, of course). Connect is already massively successful. It’s becoming more and more rare to go to a popular site on the web that doesn’t implement it in some way (even if it’s just for commenting). But in many ways, Connect doesn’t go far enough. If Facebook truly wants to be the main hub of social data on the web, it needs more data coming in from more sites, and Open Graph can provide that.
With it, they don’t need to convince every site to make a Facebook Fan Page, those sites themselves can be their own Facebook Fan Page. And the data still flows.
There’s another reason why this is a brilliant maneuver: Facebook has no shortage of critics who say it’s too closed-off, or “sandboxed.” By extending Facebook functionality outside of Facebook proper (something the team really played up today at the event), it would seem that Facebook is taking a step in the right direction. And it is, to a certain extent. But again, let’s be clear, the end goal for this is still to make Facebook the social center of the web.
Not that there’s anything necessarily wrong or nefarious about that. But rival companies, like Google, undoubtedly will not like this. They may say the right bland things in public after PR combs out any hostility in comments, but Facebook and Google remain very much at odds when it comes to the social web β and naturally, control of it. Google would undoubtedly prefer sites use Open Social, but giving users the options to do things with a social entity (social is the keyword there) that is well known to them, Facebook, will be a very enticing proposition for a lot of sites.
And another announcement from today my further propel Facebook blanketing the web with its socialness. Now that Facebook has decided it will share user email addresses with developers, Connect could become even bigger. As Yammer founder David Sacks tweeted tonight, “Now that Facebook is willing to share user emails, Facebook Connect will become default signup for most websites.” That’s an interesting thought.
One stream to rule them all?
[photo: flickr/three slow]
Isn’t this what Google Friend Connect has already been doing? It turns any website into a social container that can run OpenSocial gadgets (walls, games, et al) Granted, Facebook has a larger user DB and might execute better, but it seems very GFC-like.
Facebook still seems somewhat of a roach motel with regard to data. It seems odd to call something the “Open X” API when a) you’re the only implementation of it and b) you actually don’t open up the data fully
Techcrunch keeps running stories about Orkut’s data export feature, but the key is, it has one. That’s what open data is. Where’s my “export” button on my FB profile?
+1, 100% agreed.
I keep thinking to myself too about how I keep reading these interviews with people at Facebook (including Mark) that say that they’re trying to be as Open as possible, when in reality, they’re not open at all. There is no data export feature on Facebook, and you can’t even delete your account, that right there, is not very “open” at all.
Part of being open means allowing users to move elsewhere, taking their data with them, not holding onto the user data for dear life and not letting go.
Just like Google, Facebook wants to know all about us. What we say, think, do. Where we are, and at what time…
Why does the whole society seem to be OK with sleepwalking into the Big Brother future, without any resistance?
Was that it?
For my part, I delete quit FB account tomorrow.
It all makes sense right on time with Google Social Search experiment.
The Facebook Connect part is very interesting indeed. I just wish they add more servers so they can cope with the demand and stop killing sites from time to time with all this Facebook JavaScript waiting to load.
How much does fb pay TC for PR?
News is news, opinion is opinion. Cynicism helps nobody.
……and you are the overpaid employee of fb.
Wouldn’t that make you the overpaid employee of MySpace?
Seems like a risky move. The more Facebook allows its users to access the service through another website, the easier it is for those users to leave facebook. Any site that integrates this ‘open API’ can just as easily integrate a bunch of other social networks, making it irrelevant which network a user belongs to. It’s not that different from Microsoft’s treatment of Windows. Netscape and Java, and more recently cloud applications were a dangerous way for people to migrate from computer to computer, accessing the same functionality, and making the underlying OS irrelevant.
If I go to a website that has Facebook’s Open API, replicating many of the core functions of facebook, and at the same time allowing interaction with other social networks, IM networks, and Twitter, wouldn’t I choose that website over Facebook? And when that website accumulates enough users and I’m no longer locked in to the network effect of Facebook, will I still go back to Facebook if that website decides it wants to de-integrate facebook’s API?
I don’t agree. The goal of this move is to bring more and more data that is not specifically related to FB social interaction into the Facebook fold (reachable by its search in relation to your FB contacts).
It’s like putting a Google Chat widget in your website (I wish this was possible). People aren’t going to stop using their default Google Chat client, but their contacts and conversations are now more accessible.
This already happened with Twitter, where much of the interaction with the service doesn’t happen at twitter.com itself. This grew Twitter usage, it didn’t dilute or shrink it.
I thought nobody ever began using google chat
ontopic: If facebook consumes most of the web, where does it leave twitter? The twitter stream merging into facebook is the one thing that’s still missing. Just as much as email (when you receive gmail for example) notifications in your notifications area 
That depends very much on how FB intend to monetise the data they gather from the service and ‘external’ sites.
It could be a massive ’sharecropping’ scheme.
Nommo: the changes Facebook just made to their privacy policy certainly seem to lay the groundwork for what you say.
The new policy says that Facebook may collect information about users from “applications that you use through Facebook Platform (such as games and utilities) or the websites that you interact with through Facebook Connect.” This information would include “information about actions you take” on those applications and websites.
Moreover, Facebook’s new policy states, “We may institute programs with advertising partners and other websites in which they share information with us.”
The above excerpted from my blog post about this: http://bit.ly/1YbfQS
I should also say that the new policy appears to be a draft, open for comment through noon PST November 5, the Facebook blog says.
Fantastic post with great content and ideas,look forward to your next post.
Cheers
Derek Overington
Facebook clearly wants to become “the” social network. Defeating MySpace and Friendster is one thing, but can they really replace LinkedIn (business), and Steam (gaming)? I don’t know if I want FB alone to be my social center of the web.
Facebook is meant for you to be “social” with your family and friends, not the rest of society. The wall garden approach and sense of security is what allowed Facebook to beat out My Space. Changing that approach is risking. Certainly Facebook needs to open up more to become a hugely profitable company, but doing so without upsetting their users will be very tricky.
How will this upset users?
Now instead of having to build a whole new network into your website, you can bring your already existing one.
For example, I don’t have many people registered as commenters on my website since whenever I post something they just comment about it on Facebook where a lot more people can have a conversation (and Facebooks comments allow for a lot more dynamic content than my site does).
With Open Graph, I could have people mutually discussing a post from both Facebook and my site, and all that discussion will be shared and searchable.
“Now instead of having to build a whole new network into your website, you can bring your already existing one.”
Problem is, it isn’t ‘your’ network. If it’s on facebook.com, the network you think is ‘yours’ actually belongs to Facebook, NOT you.
http://www.harm...r_facebook.html
fast forward 2012: “Remember FB??” “Who??”
How do you figure that? They’re cashflow positive, they’re still growing, and they’re now as embedded in most people’s experience of the web as Google are.
Prediction fail. They have too much momentum. Just because its on the internet, doesn’t make it so easily replaced. The internet is beginning to grow up, and we will begin to see more heavyweights who will be around for a while (Google, Facebook, maybe Twitter).
I think its all crazy how much these social networking sites are taking over the internet and our lives. I’m already addicted to facebook. What am I going to do when the whole internet is facebook-accessable. Will it make it easier or more confusing to navigate? My university is actually developing a social media graduate degree. How crazy is that? Next year you’ll be able to get a graduate degree studying facebook. What is the world coming to? It’ll be interesting.
http://www.drury.edu/
When do we get the email addresses?
shiva facebook connect
second comments
So basically Facebook is still AOL circa 1998 with three major differences.
1. Completely web-based
2. You can “connect” to other users via “friendships” and share your info/pics/etc
3. You can build your own apps on the platform instead of getting stuck with one Finance app, you can play with farm animals
I rate the ‘tributary’ term as that describes the direction the Internet is headed in well!
Interesting. If facebook rolls this out in the form of widgets that can be easily integrated into sites (ie or via Wordpress, etc), I can see this rolling out in an almost seamless, unobtrusive manner. It could literally be “everywhere” before most realized it.
“Again, itβs like a Facebook Page, but it would be on your site. ”
WRONG! It would be ‘like’ your website, except it would actually be Facebook’s website. Facebook would own and control it, NOT you.
Wake up people! Keep your stuff under your own control, don’t lend your identity to Facebook or the like so they can manipulate and abuse you. Don’t build your home on someone else’s land and expect to be able to own it. You can not! Nobody can own your internet domain for you.
If you’re going to use Facebook at all, use it as a tributary to YOUR website – although Facebook makes that practically impossible. Because Facebook is actually beyond your control, it is worse than useless to you. Their ‘policies’, ‘terms’, ‘rules’ whatever are not worth the virtual pages they’re written on – they are of no practical value to you.
http://www.harm...r_facebook.html
one of the few thinking outside the box here – keep it up, and hopefully others will listen!
actually, i take that back. skimmed your site and it seems ur story is only half-baked. i agree fbk ‘owns’ its users’ data, but i think many users know exactly what they are getting into – it’s pure marketing for them. many are willing to give up control of their data so they can ‘reach’ millions… and be celebrities, or sell products, or whatever they wish to get from the publicity of the small to the grande things in their lives. makes much more sense for companies selling stuff to the consumerist masses. from a publisher/developer’s perspective, it’s not clear that letting fbk suck your site’s content into their stream would be well-founded.
Hmm, read your site, Leif. Noticed this little sentence: You wouldn’t holiday in North Korea, so why waste your time on Facebook?!
I’d actually go see North Korea if I could afford to. I also know people who’ve been there. But all of this aside, are you really comparing North Korea with Facebook? Dude, seriously…
Add these rules to adblockplus to block facebook tracking
connect.facebook.com/*
|http://api.facebook.com/*
*.facebook.com/connect.php/*
*.facebook.com/js/api_lib
This is huge. It is (finally) the mainstreaming of RSS.
I wonder whether David Sacks has considered what happens when a user signs up for some web service using Facebook and then gets shut out of his Facebook account. I don’t know how often Facebook users get shut out of their accounts, but it certainly happens, typically because Facebook’s automatic monitoring decides they’re doing something spammy. A web service with paying customers (yes, they do exist) would be particularly imprudent to let a customer sign up in such a way that he would be shut out of his paid account if he got shut out of his Facebook account.
MG: I know you’re trying to emulate Thomas Friedman, but keep in mind that good writing is not synonymous with tortured analogies. First there was the “OS as religion” dreck and now this tributary nonsense.
>>So you can imagine that you might be able to create a Facebook-style Wall to include on your site, but able to update your statuses from your site, leave comments, like items, etc.
Sounds like these are extensions to the Connect API?
I thought it appropriate to Facebook connect in for this comment MG. All of us owning our own social graph is where the web is headed. Whether Facebook controls that pipeline and information stream is entirely up to each user.
The benefits include a central virtual space to manage your friends/network/connections/fan pages. The HUGE downside is a lack of portability and ultimately user control.
A social protocol will evolve that we’ll all be using in a couple of years, maybe the open source community will or has already created it.
Agreed.
Not just “All of your profiles belongs to us”
But “All of your websites belongs to us”
/me shudders
This is a major development.
This is a very impressive idea, and it gives me two thoughts –
1) this could make Facebook exponentially larger and more important than what it is now
2) I would use it except for the fact that I don’t trust Facebook: The simple fact that you can’t delete (never mind export) your profile – that to me smells evil. (And yes, I use facebook a lot anyway