As expected, Facebook made some pretty big announcements at their F8 conference this week. We asked our development lead, Morley Zhi, for an analysis of the changes and what opportunities these present for our clients. Here’s a quick rundown of the changes:
The Open Graph
With its development of the Open Graph API, Facebook is giving publishers a toolset for connecting content on their sites with Facebook in a more integrated fashion. In general, the social plug-ins are extremely useful but almost completely un-customizable; for now they’ll look exactly like they look on the preview page.
The Graph API looks like it has much of the same functionality as Facebook Connect, but all the API calls can happen on the PHP side instead of the Javascript side, which gives us more flexibility and makes it faster for the end user. What that means in English: the new API works like Facebook connect, but is a lot more elegant.
Some of these new tools are drag-and-drop and don’t need any backend integration and the rest require some backend work on the same level of work as implementing Facebook Connect. We’ve separated the reviews by type.
Like Button & Like Box
Instead of becoming Fans, users on Facebook will now “Like”Pages on Facebook, as well as sites and sub-pages elsewhere on the web. Off-Facebook “Likes” will permanently link the liked web page to the user’s profile.
Activity feed
This shows the five (or so) most recent Facebook actions that occur on a site (i.e. people liking or sharing sub-pages of a website). It’s pretty useful and easy to set up, it also reports all activity on your domain. This is a great tool for sidebars and homepages and other places with a site-wide context. Each entry is what a person does, as opposed to…
Recommendations
This shows the top 5 or so pages on a domain, ranked by how many people like or share each. Again, this is a good tool for sidebars or homepages.
Comments
This brings a comment board to any page. It’s especially useful because Facebook introduced an API call that lets you see all the comment boards you used, so we have more options for administering the boards. There’s no spam protection though, which makes it less useful than a Wordpress as a commenting system, which blocks spam.
Live stream box
This is the same live stream box and has not changed.
Login with Faces
This just pretties up the FB Connect login button with friends who are also on the site. This creates a social incentive for users to sign up if their friend’s already have. Using this unit means implementing Facebook Connect.
Facepile
This is just Login with Faces without the Login button.
• F8, the big Facebok developer conference is happening this Wednesday in San Franscisco
Social media “platforms” are hot right now. And why not? Today, you don’t necessarily have to pay to build custom 
