Facebook Platform: Social Networking As A New Marketing Tool?

New social networking tools from Facebook that make it easy to recommend products to online friends is turning the legions of Facebook users into Web-based marketers' newest sales and advertising arms.

Facebook on Wednesday used its f8 conference, held this week in San Francisco, to introduce the next version of Facebook Platform, which includes new features that make it easier than ever for users to share their online experience in the form of new social plug-ins.

Those plug-ins, which are buttons that appear on customer Websites, include Like, Activity Feed, and Recommendations.

Those buttons, which are already starting to appear on popular Websites from such companies as the New York Times, CNN, Time, Levis, Univision, and ABC, let Facebook users instantly share their experiences and recommendations across their social network.

However, there were no "Unlike" or "Not Recommended" buttons introduced, which also makes it easier for businesses adopting the new Facebook technology to benefit from it via potential sales through online word-of-mouth or even possibly viral marketing.

Facebook Co-founder Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday wrote in his blog that Facebook has made it easy to share not only links to Web pages but also information on the people and things they care about.

The new version of Facebook Platform puts people at the center of the Web by building an open graph of the connections that users make on-line, Zukerman wrote.

Next: Creating Personalized Experiences

That open graph makes it possible to continually update one's online connections automatically, creating personalized experiences that can be easily shared.

"For example, if you like a band on Pandora, that information can become part of the graph so that later if you visit a concert site, the site can tell you when the band you like is coming to your area. The power of the open graph is that it helps to create a smarter, personalized web that gets better with every action taken," Zuckerman wrote.

To build that open graph, users will have access to the Like, Activity Feed, and Recommendations buttons, wrote Austin Haugen, a product manager for Facebook Platform.

The "Like" button, when pressed by a Facebook user, creates a persistent connection to something online like a book or movie, and adds it to the user's profile, Haugen wrote in his blog.

Once that connection is made, users can easily return to that object, get automatic updates from that object's Website, and share the interest with Facebook friends.

The "Activity Feed" button lets a Facebook book user who goes to a Website with the plug-in to see what his or her friends are doing there in real-time. For instance, Haugen wrote, a user going to the CNN Website could see what articles friends are sharing, recommending, and commenting on.

The "Recommendations" button creates what Haugen called a "people-powered most popular" list. A user logged into Facebook who visits a site with the "Recommendations" technology enabled will instantly see the information people are liking and sharing in real time.

Security is not an issue with the new Facebook Platform plug-ins, Haugen wrote.

"It's important to note that none of your personal data is shared with a site when you view these new features, and they will only be visible to you when you're logged in to Facebook. Also, none of these features impact or change Facebook's advertising programs or policies," Haugen wrote.