In its never-ending quest to be a part of every aspect of your life, Facebook has now integrated other applications into its Open Graph platform. What this means is that if someone uses an application such as Viddy or Socialcam, you can choose to receive updates in your News Feed when that person interacts with that application. As an example, say that your favorite athlete is frequently updates their Facebook Page, uploads Socialcam videos, posts Instagram photos, and checks in on FourSquare. As a fan, you might only care about the Socialcam videos. You no longer need to subscribe to the athlete’s entire Facebook Page, but instead just say that you would like for Facebook to track their Socialcam activities.
Facebook has provided the necessary code to integrate this into other applications, and brands would be wise to incorporate this. While having your News Feed bombarded with notifications from one application can be extremely annoying, Open Graph offers a way for brands to increase their awareness, without being a nuisance. Brands can now promote their high profile users, and tell their fans to follow along on Facebook. This feature basically makes Facebook a centralized hub for all of your social following needs.
Although this does seem like a great feature, there are definitely some issues when it comes to privacy. As of yet, Facebook has not released information on whether people will be able to opt out of this service. In addition, if you would like to follow someone’s activity, you do not need to be their Facebook friend or subscribe to their posts. This basically means that anybody with a Facebook account can follow your activity on apps using Open Graph. Would you be more wary of where you check-in on FourSquare or what shows you watch with GetGlue if you know that your boss could anonymously be tracking you on Facebook?
