Thursday, April 22, 2010

Facebook "Likes" Its Future

With all the talk over the past few weeks of iPad launches and Foursquare changes, Facebook was starting to fade a little bit from the public frenzy it usually enjoys.

Well on Wednesday, Mark Zuckerberg ended that dry spell with some major announcements about new Facebook developments at the F8 Developer Conference, including elaborating on Facebook doing away with becoming "fans" of things and simply going with a simplified "like" button.

At F8, Zuckerberg announced that this feature will apply to other sites as well, namely Pandora and IMDb. There will now be "Like" buttons on the pages for different bands and actors on the two sites, allowing people to "like" them directly from wherever they are at. Facebook is also using a simpler permission system to speed up this process.

This new "Like" system, coupled with their new Open Graph platform, means that more and more personal information will be available on Facebook, which will then in turn be available to businesses. This will allow for further tailoring of advertisements and offers to targeted consumers.

While huge changes like these will undoubtedly raise questions about privacy invasion, Facebook has got to "like" where the social networking giant is heading.