Facebook Personalizes the Web with Open Graph

Of all of Facebook’s announcement during today’s f8 conference, none is more important to the issue of Internet privacy than the Open Graph. With the Open Graph, Facebook hopes to tie everything you do online back to your Facebook profile.

As Mashable explains, Open Graph is essentially a replacement for Facebook Connect.

“When you connect to sites like Yelp via your Facebook profile, Yelp will have access to any information you’ve made publicly available about your favorite foods or favorite bands, and will be able to take that into account when giving you information about restaurants or music venues. For example, Yelp could pull information about your favorite music from data that Pandora added to the graph when you favorited a song on its site.”

Obviously, there are major privacy implications to sharing user data with third-party companies on such a massive scale. In his remarks, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg indicated that only information that is shared publicly on Facebook will be used as part of the Open Graph. Given how few people truly understand what is and is not public on their own profiles, however, that’s a small comfort.

Zuckerberg faced significant criticism in January over remarks that his company was merely pursuing “new social norms” when it took steps to open up user profiles to the greater web. Here on our blog, ReputationDefender Chief Privacy Officer Dave Thompson wrote a compelling article challenging the merits of Facebook’s decision, explaining how “every action on Facebook affects a much larger privacy ecosystem.“

With Open Graph prepared to roll out in the coming weeks, Dave’s thoughts seem more pertinent ever. The information that we share on Facebook is no longer restricted to Facebook. Even with privacy settings in place, it is easier than ever to make a frighteningly accurate social profile of someone based solely on information found through simple Google results.

Facebook wants to be the primary hub through which we surf the web. Judging by the company’s announcements today, I wouldn’t say they are far off from achieving that goal. As the company continues to expand and compete directly with the likes of Google, however, Facebook users need to understand that the choices they make online will directly affect their lives and not just through more personalized advertising.