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Every web page is now a Facebook page.
It’s not often that a technical change like an API upgrade creates a stir, but Facebook’s announcement last week has generated a vast amount of interest.
Essentially every page on the web can now be part of Facebook. You can “like” a page on any site, comment on it, and see the photos of all your friends who’ve visited it. (There’s now a Like button on our home page – please do!)
It’s a two-way street. Information also flows to the web site. Just about all the information you’ve put on Facebook is available. That includes your photo, your friends, your likes, your age, gender, education and location. Which gives a site an amazing amount of information to use to target content and advertising. Suddenly Facebook has become a more exciting place than Google for business advertisers.
Not everyone is happy with this level of information sharing. Privacy is a concern, of course. Facebook says it “helps you connect and share with the people in your life”. We join Facebook to share with people, not advertisers. A group of high-profile Google engineers have already publicly announced their departure from Facebook. Perhaps many more people will follow when they realise how much of their personal information is being shared with how many companies.