The F8 conference held last September saw Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg promising to deliver what he called a “frictionless” social networking experience across the Web using applications. And discounting any problem, this starts tomorrow making good his promise, according to the All Things Digital site.
The world’s leading social site with a membership getting closer to a billion will hold a press event in San Francisco this Wednesday to unveil the first batch of Open Graph Actions that enable online folks to share activities outside the site with its users, All Digital said citing industry sources. There’s no word, however, on how many actions will be supported as integral to Facebook’s Open Graph apps.
The focus driving Facebook’s app idea is to combine “actions” users do in Facebook and off in a single spot in the member’s Open Graph. To illustrate, a Facebook user watching TV online, listening to a song, or reading an article on the Web can shared these activities on Facebook for their online friends to see and join them. At F8, Zuckerberg intimated that the concept could spark “a completely new class of social apps than what was ever possible before.”
All this won’t happen automatically as Facebook still has to require its members to opt-in to share from a site. Once done, all their activities on that site will be shared with friends back on Facebook until he or she decides to turn it off.
At the F8 conference, Facebook disclosed that all shared content won’t appear in users’ news feed. It will appear, instead, in their Timeline, which creates a visual record confirming what the user has been doing over several years. This timeline was made available in 2011 and is currently opt-in, but Facebook is expected to transition all user accounts to Timeline soon. Liz Ganess of All Things Digital points out, the launch would mostly likely be concurrent with Open Graph Actions’ launch considering that it requires Timeline to work.
Late in December, Facebook announced it will start processing Open Graph applications this January. Once approved, the developer gets notified by Facebook authorizing them to start offering the feature to users. Facebook has yet to confirm the All Things Digital report.
