In case you didn’t catch Facebook’s big announcement, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the new “Open Graph protocol”, which allows people to share the connections they make on any website with their friends on Facebook.

Facebook is now essentially building “live” profiles on everyone, as opposed to the traditional static profiles that are stored in a database. Information will feed into these live profiles from across the web. For example, the music you listen to on Pandora, the articles you read on CNN, and the recipes you download on Food Network sites could all be visible to your friends on Facebook. With these new hyper-updated profiles, you will have a sense of what people’s preferences are in real time and ads will become much more targeted.

Zuckerberg also said that Facebook hopes the new tools will encourage publishers, brands and media businesses to use the products to directly incorporate their companies into social media.

The real immediate to-do for marketers is to add Open Graph protocol meta tags and the “like” button to their website content. When people visit their site, they can click these “like” buttons and instantly promote the fact that they found the site or content of value – to their entire Facebook network. This new “like” system can help influence users to take action because it will actually display profile pictures of their friends that “like” the content directly on the page.

This is being called the biggest development in social media in years. Microsoft, ESPN and Yelp are already “in” – operating “Open-Graph-enabled” websites. Countless other businesses will be onboard very soon. Within five hours of announcing this new feature over 75 of Facebook’s closest partners had over 1,000,000,000 interactions. The impact is “real” engagement between consumers and brands.

Check out this AdAge article about the Universal “Like” Button.

How do you think this platform will change your brand /client’s interactive marketing strategy?

Filed under: Brand Strategy, Emerging Technology, Integration, Social Media, Uncategorized on May 4th, 2010