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Facebook Open Graph
Monday, June 21. 2010
Facebook Open Graph
During its developer conferene f8 on the 21st of April, Facebook
presented Open Graph. But what is it exactly and what can I, as a
webmaster, do with it? This and more will be clarified in this article (read german version).
What is Open Graph?
Facebook describes itself as a social graph (social network).
Within Facebook, people organize themselves to communities of interests,
commune together and much more. This social network can also be
represented graphically. A simplified version of a social network
illustration within Facebook:
In the middle we can see a single person standing in relations to other
people (circle of friends). But we can also see that this social network
is limited to Facebook and only relations or friendships between people
are allowed. What happens, if you want to display relations to your
favorite movie, restaurant or cinema, which are not within the social
graph of Facebook? Previously it was simply not possible. But with help
of Open Graph, Facebook breaks through its own limitations and expands
its social network to all web pages, which do implement the Open Graph
Protocol. Thus do not only allow relations between persons, but also to
any object from the real world that is represented by a web page:
Open Graph therefore primarily is a standardized
protocol which allows any web page to become a part of a social
network. Currently only Facebook - the initiator of this protocol - has
the ability to include Open Graph pages into its social network. Primary
the protocol is designed for web pages, which represents objects from
the real world (movies, restaurants, places and so on). You can describe
your web page very easily by HTML meta tags. For example, Facebook uses
this data to display more detailed content:
Simple wall messages with links are provided or it can be determined how
many people like the Open Graph page "The Rock (movie)". Of course
there are many other ways to use the collected data. For example, a
search for a restaurants will only show restaurants, that my friends
also do like.
How to implement this?
The goal of the Open Graph Protocol is that it can be implemented
without extensive programming knowledge. So it is really simple: It is
just based on HTML meta tags. The easiest way to its implementation
would be like this (example from facebook.com):
<html xmlns:og="http://opengraphprotocol.org/schema/"
xmlns:fb="http://www.facebook.com/2008/fbml">
<head>
<title>The Rock (1996)</title>
<meta property="og:title" content="The Rock"/>
<meta property="og:type" content="movie"/>
<meta property="og:url" content="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117500/"/>
<meta property="og:image" content="http://ia.media-imdb.com/rock.jpg"/>
<meta property="og:site_name" content="IMDb"/>
...
</head>
...
</html>
The five meta tags og:title, og:type, og:url, og:image
and og:site_name are required. At this point it is noted that
the documentation on Facebook differs from the Open Graph
documentation. The Open Graph documentation only describes four meta
tags as a requirement - og:site_name is not applicable. In
doubt, og:site_name should also be specified. In addition to
these five (or four) required meta tags, there are much more meta tags
available to describe a web page more in detail. For example, geographic
coordinates for locations, contact information such as an address or a
telephone number. A detailed description of the required and optional
meta tags can be found in the documentation of the Open Graph Protocol.
In order for Facebook to evaluate the meta-information, the
social plugin Like Button must be inserted. During the
publication of the Open Graph Protocol Facebook also revised the social
plugins. You can now easily implement social plugins through an IFrame.
In the documentation, Facebook offers informations for each social
plugin, like a small WYSIWYG editor which generates the necessary HTML
code for its implementation. The implementation by FBML is still possible and should be preferred if
you have the Facebook JavaScript SDK already in use. The complete
implementation of the Open Graph Protocol for Facebook:
<html xmlns:og="http://opengraphprotocol.org/schema/"
xmlns:fb="http://www.facebook.com/2008/fbml">
<head>
<title>The Rock (1996)</title>
<meta property="og:title" content="The Rock"/>
<meta property="og:type" content="movie"/>
<meta property="og:url" content="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117500/"/>
<meta property="og:image" content="http://ia.media-imdb.com/rock.jpg"/>
<meta property="og:site_name" content="IMDb"/>
</head>
<body>
<iframe src="http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=http%253A%252F%252Fwww.imdb.com%252Ftitle%252Ftt0117500%252F&layout=standard&show_faces=true&width=450&action=like&font&colorscheme=light&height=80" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" style="border:none; overflow:hidden; width:450px; height:80px;" allowTransparency="true"></iframe>
</body>
</html>
Once the Like Button is clicked on an Open Graph page,
an appropriate status message will be send to the Facebook profile of
the user. Facebook also evaluates the meta tags and may create an own
page which represents the Open Graph page. For more information, refer
to Lessons Learnt.
Administration
Open Graph pages can be administered within Facebook. You can
see statistics like the number of visitors or you can make Stream
Updates. For example, you could send a status message to all fans of
an Open Graph page, that there is something new on it. Here you have to
note, that this functionallity currently does not exists. Facebook
wants to change this soon.
To administer a Open Graph page within Facebook, the meta
tag fb:admins is required. Its value is a comma separated list of
user IDs or usernames of the Facebook accounts which are allowed to
administer the page. You can administer your pages in Profile - Pages
You Admin. Moreover, there is the possibility to admin Open Graph
pages with an Facebook app. To do so, the meta tag fb:app_id
holds the app ID of your Facebook app.
To prevent misusage, Facebook doesn't evaluate the meta tags og:title
and og:type, if more then 10 people like the Open Graph page.
The meta tag fb:admins will only be evaluated conditionally - the
first user ID can not be changed. You should know, that Facebook needs
up to 15 minutes to update all the meta tags after a change.
Lessons Learnt
If you are webmaster of a well-known page you should consider
very carefully whether you want to implement the Open Graph Protocol.
Especially if you already have a fan page for your page on Facebook.
Because Facebook creates special pages for Open Graph pages, which
competes to your fan page. This competition may also exist for your real
page, when Facebook pages appear before your page in resultsets of
search engines, provided that the Facebook pages are available for
search engines.
Somewhat annoying is the poor documentation and improper
implementation of Open Graph by Facebook. The examples referred in the
documention are not always clear and the administration for Open Graph
pages does not work at the time of writing this article. Overall it
feels a little bit half-baked.
Also the issue of privacy is not taken seriously enough.
Because with the help of Open Graph, Facebook is able to study the
browsing habits of its users even better. The mere implementation of the
Open Graph Protocol is enough to tell Facebook, when and how often
pages were accessed.
Conclusion
Open Graph has a lot of potential, which unfortunately is only limited available. Indeed it provides excellent opportunities to increase the awareness of one's website dramatically and addessing target groups directly, but these options are obviously limited to Facebook. It would be desirable, that other social networks and online communities would use the new protocol. However, we should not write off Open Graph because of the lack of acceptance and the aforementioned issues. It is still in its beginnings and we will see what the future brings.
Am 21. April hat Facebook während seiner Entwicklerkonferenz f8 Open Graph vorgestellt. Doch was ist das überhaupt und was kann ich als Webseitenbetreiber damit machen? Dies und mehr soll in diesem Artikel (englische Version lesen) geklärt werden.Wa
Tracked: Jun 24, 11:58