Have You Noticed the Facebook "Like" Button? It's Facebook Open Graph.

It's almost widely-known in the social web/ tech space that Facebook is looking to be the standard for "social personalization" for pretty much everything people do online. And lately, there's been a lot of mention around Facebook's Open Graph API.

What is Open Graph?
It's a collection of everything a web user likes across the internet. Some of you may have noticed a new "Like" button at the bottom of webpages surfacing lately. It's one of the new tools that's a part of Facebook's Open Graph program. The thought is that people click on the button as they surf the web and share what they like with their network. In the background is an API used to gather all of this information, which will allow other sites to highlight content based on user preferences. Over time, Facebook will have a collection of all the things you and your demographic group likes - books, music, food, events, clothing, etc. all stored in one place.

Impacts of the Open Graph on the Social Shopping Experience
1. With Facebook Open Graph, companies will be able to provide an online shopping experience customized to a customer's "Likes", item previews, and past purchases. So far, not a lot of companies have the ability or luxury of this competitive advantage except for giants like Best Buy.

2. It's a known fact that people trust reviews and recommendations from peers. At least most of them are. As people become more transparent with their online shopping process and share with their friends that process, consumers will become even more powerful in spreading the word about a product. Good or bad. Try and leverage the former.

3. Have you noticed yourself more likely to buy when you're with someone else as opposed to shopping alone? Making the shopping process more social will allow a friend to give their opinion about a product that may make the sale faster. Sometimes, people hold back on a purchase simply because they're indifferent between two miniscule things (e.g. colour). Unless it's really bad, I usually find that friends will encourage you to buy anyway.

The Wrap Up
Last year, there was a statistic that showed Facebook being one of the top drivers of traffic to Google. A few weeks ago, Facebook had already surpassed Google in web traffic. At this rate, watch to see that more and more web traffic to online stores will start to come from Facebook. Perhaps, now, we'll all have a better reason to buy Facebook credits (to use towards online shopping) as opposed to buying virtual gifts for our friends. That is, if you do.

I'll leave you with a video of the 2010 f8 Keynote Remarks from Mark Zuckerburg. Enjoy.