Facebook looking to take over the Web

Facebook wants to increase their Web presence, connecting all sites together.

For the third consecutive year, the social networking website Facebook held their f8 conference aimed at developers who provide Facebook’s more then 400 million users with applications. Third party developers attending the meeting learnt that they will now be able to keep Facebook user information for more than 24 hours (the current limitation).

In a more general fashion, the Facebook founder stated that he wishes to have a single Facebook identity which can be used to connect to all Web sites with a single click. A dedicated toolbar for this operation is currently under development.

Already present within the social network, Mark Zuckerberg believes the I like this button could be found on thousands of sites in the coming 24 hours. You can for example already click on this option at the Dailymotion video sharing site. Thanks to this new social plug-in, a user is able to share the videos from their Facebook profile. "In one click, a video is integrated into the users Facebook wall", explains Dailymotion. This button will also allow for users to associate a personal comment to the shared content.

With the social network plug-in’s, Facebook also provides an example of activity streams which allow users to get updates as to what their friends are up to on a web site. Among the partner sites, we find CNN which allows you to see if your friends liked reading a particular article. "When you are connected to Facebook and visit CNN.com, you will instantaneously see articles and subjects that your friends are sharing, have recommended or have commented on in their activity stream (note: next to the article)".

These new features are part of the deployment of the new Open Graph API: "Today, the web is a series of unstructured links which connect the different sites together. We will try where possible to create connections between the sites. The Open Graph puts users at the heart of the web", stated Mark Zuckerberg ( reported by the AFP ).

Facebook’s desire to take over the web may start to worry Google. With Open Graph, any web page can be indexed by a Facebook user.