Facebook's plan for world domination

23/04/10 posted by Liz Niland

Facebook are set to take over the world and leave Google, Twitter and Myspace lagging in their wake. Well so they think anyway. But, we have to say, with the features they officially unveiled at their f8 conference, they have a very good chance of making global web domination a reality.

As TechCrunch’s MG Siegler noted, “Google had better watch out. There may be a new sheriff in web town.” Seeking to integrate pretty much the entire internet with Facebook, the biggest Google-beating feature to be announced is a new approach to social connections that will mean big points for companies that can harness the technology, but will no doubt raise ear-piercing alarm bells for users concerned about Facebook’s privacy policy.

Called the Open Graph API, this ties in with another fresh feature - the universal “Like” button. Already hosted on sites as massive as IMDB and CNN, this Like button will mean that Facebook users (and let’s face it, that’s got to be pretty much everyone in the developed world now right?) can “Like” a film on IMDB, for example, and have it recorded on their profile, in the same way users could “Like” a brand from within Facebook.

The even bigger change now though - and the change that will have privacy proponents up in arms - is that making your Facebook activity able to be seen by “everyone” will now result in everyone in the “Facebook ecosystem”. As they’re saying over at Mashable, “the nature of how public information can be linked across different sites is now more robust, which makes it that much more important for the privacy-concerned to read the fine print”.

As far as Google-beating goes, Zuckerberg and his cohorts are seeking to give Facebook activity more of a long term existence, or, as Erick Schonfeld put it “taking some of the information that pops up in people’s realtime streams and baking it into the Web”. It’s certainly a boon for developers and possibly marketers and researchers but if you don’t really want to “bake” your love for Avatar, then definitely review your privacy settings now.