You may not know it, but Facebook’s Open Graph tool is sharing your app activity in all corners of the social network. When you use apps to play a game, listen to a song or share your books on Facebook, the network spreads that information to your friends in different ways.
Facebook unveiled Open Graph last year, a way for publishers to design applications with sharing in mind: “After a user adds your app to their Timeline, app specific actions are shared on Facebook via the Open Graph. As your app becomes an important part of how users express themselves, these actions are more prominently displayed throughout the Facebook Timeline, News Feed, and Ticker. This enables your app to become a key part of the user’s and their friend’s experience on Facebook.”
At the Inside Social Apps conference last week, Facebook director of product management Carl Sjogreen explained how publishers can incorporate Facebook Open Graph into new apps: “you have to think like a user: ‘what are the things you’d want to show off on Timeline, show off to your friends, what are the things you want to share?’ Those are great things to enable with Open Graph because it makes Timeline richer.”
Do you think more publishers and literary developers should incorporate Open Graph into their Facebook apps? If you are concerned about privacy, visit our How to Control Your Facebook Apps post.
Check out more of our Inside Social Apps coverage at these links:
Why Your Google+ Profile Matters
Social Game Tools for Publishers
How Writers Can Explore Gaia Online
A Single Loyal App User Costs $1.81
Google+’s David Glazer To App Developers: ‘I Want Someone To Build a Deck of Cards’