Facebook & its OpenGraph attack – What it means for you…

By: Chris Cox Date Posted: July 18, 2010

Facebook is launching their attack on Google with OpenGraphFacebook launched its “OpenGraph” standard recently at their developer’s conference. Long story short, Open Graph is the next level up for them as they try to assert authority over the web.

You know how a lot of sites have that little “Like” button on them? You might have seen that popping up a lot lately on bigger sites. That’s the obvious manifestation of this thing. It connects any page on the internet into Facebook and makes it a “Page” there.

That’s one benefit if you’re the content-provider, who owns that page – you’re getting exposed socially to everyone who is friends with the person who Likes your page. That gives you the potential to go viral.

But here’s the big thing that not a lot of people have really started to grasp yet — that’s not it for Facebook. This is just the beginning. Facebook is almost certainly going to launch a competing search engine – but instead of being based on links, like Google (essentially each site who links to your site counts as a vote to Google, so the top few are those with the most and best links), they’ll be ranking pages based on LIKES. A social search engine.

That’s powerful stuff. Especially if you get in on this stuff early, and you have a good fanbase to pump you up the charts. And if your content has the potential to go viral, it’s now that much more likely that it will because of that same social nature.

I don’t know how closely you follow what’s happening online with Facebook, Google, Bing, etc. But it gets me pretty excited, I’m not gonna lie to you.

Here’s why. Facebook is launching what amounts to a full-on-frontal on Google (ha ha I just said full-on-frontal…). They’re taking the fight to Google. The search behemoth has thus far failed in many of its important social media forays to threaten Facebook and Twitter. And now Facebook’s taking it to them.

First, there was Google Wave. To be fair Google really shouldn’t have marketed this as a social application for consumers. It’s not dead, but to people like you and me, it is – it’s a PR failure.

Then, there was Google Buzz. And for one reason or another which we can’t get into right now, it just didn’t gain traction. We just didn’t see why we should open another social account, what differentiated it, and why we should leave Twitter. So, we didn’t. Oops.

Add to both of those the fact that Google’s search stats are flatlining (actually DOWN 8%) which Bing is growing every month (UP 34%), and their deal, soon to come to fruition with Yahoo, is going to start posing a real menace.

Now, don’t get me wrong, Google’s still in an extremely strong position. They’re still the goliath on that stage, with 75% of the search market. But it’s obvious they’re under increasing attack. Now add to that this brand new Facebook threat and you can start to see a slightly more competitive and colourful digital media landscape

It’s an exciting time to be online. You’ve gotta be quick on your toes with what’s working now, and implementing, but if you are – it’s like the Wild West out there, big fortunes to be made if you can keep up. Stay tuned, gunslinger.

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