Today Facebook made a significant announcement: publishers can now publish content to the feeds of all people who liked a specific page. This is a significant step forward in the opening of Facebook Page functionality to the entire web. Also as part of the announcement, Facebook announced a minor, yet significant, upgrade that will convert all iFrame like buttons into share buttons as well.
This is the second step of Facebook providing all pages on the internet with the same tools that all Facebook Pages have. For example, let’s say you “like” this article. I will be able to send a news feed story to all Facebook users who liked that page. The impact of this is significant. Imagine the ability for any object that you like to be able to communicate with you directly through the news feed. In other words, all webpages on the internet immediately have become two-way communication channels.
Additionally, publishers will be able to track how that information was spread through Facebook via the addition of upgraded analytics features. As described in Facebook’s documentation, publishers can add the “ref” attribute to any like button and they will be passed back information about where new visitors came from on Facebook (’home’, ‘profile’, ’search’, or ‘other’). For example, I could add the ref attribute, and then view my Page Insights to find out what percentage of incoming visitors found the page through Facebook Search.
While this is nowhere near the final phase of Facebook’s continued opening of Pages to the web, this is a major step that will help empower publishers even more. We’ll be posting more details in the near future about the best practices surrounding the implementation of like buttons on your website. For more information, view today’s blog post from Facebook.
cue major spam from the “like farm” sites.
Can you say SPAM? Lets spell it folks. S. P. A. M. is coming to facebook. I know people who have unliked all corporate pages. I also see a HUGE opening for a new network to be friendly vs offensive to the masses. Also why I never Like anything off Facebook.
I predict more backlash, and worry about the potential for overflow.
That opens up a publishing avenue for every page created by an individual person/brand/business.
thanks, nick, for all your good work to keep those a few steps behind you up to date and informed on all things facebook.
Hi Nick, as soon as I posted this on my wall I got the same question from a mess of different people: Does this mean that we’re now opening ourselves up to be Facebook spammed by any company or organization that we ‘like’? Thoughts on this?
If you can un-Like something that you previously Liked, wouldn’t that mitigate spam and leave control in your hands? Or is that just naive idealism?
Nick,
I think you might be misinterpreting this. Open Graph object owners have always been able to publish to their users assuming it is an owned object with an app id linked to it.
All they did in this release was release a way to do it via the API rather than having to find the object within Facebook and use it’s publisher.
We’ve been publishing to people who have liked our objects since OG was released. Now we can do it via the api.
Guess we’ll all start becoming more careful about clicking the like button from now on, which is a shame.
Publishers have had the opportunity of pushing stories to page likers for several months before todays announcement. It only required that the liked page included relevant Open Graph tags. If you’re interested, I’ve written a blog-post on the topic: http://friism.com/facebook-open-graph-at-ekstrabladet-dk
how long til this gets turned off? bets?
It now becomes clear why they’re testing the removal of “Most recent” from our newsfeeds! I agree with the other posters, this spells SPAM!
Spam spam spam
Are they stupid or what?
All these stupid changes in the last days only a stupid idiot could even think about them…
They dictate, they force you to do what they want and they don’t even give you the oppurtunity to choose if you want it or not…
I’ll remove a Page as soon as I see ONE single comment from a user…
Great reporting Nick. To answer people’s questions - the edge rank / news feed optimization is still in place here- so just because you like an object - doesn’t mean you’ll ever see it’s future status updates - unless those updates generate enough comments and likes to be determined as relevant to you and hit your news feed.
I thought you could already do this? I’ve been doing this on sites I create already….
STOP Letting Other Websites SPAM “Likers”
http://www.facebook.com/pages/STOP-Letting-Other-Websites-SPAM-Likers/137147649651198
Like farms will become a gold mine !!!!
I still dont understand how you can send a news feed story to all Facebook users who liked that page?
I’ve been able to do this already for over 2 months now. This is nothing new. All the like buttons on my websites had a button next to them saying “admin”. If I clicked that it would take me to a pseudo fan page on facebook that I could only see, and through this page I could send new updates to all the people who liked it. This has been this way for the pas 2+ months (probably longer).
As a user I completely understand people being leery of Facebook spam. I like tons of pages, and if they all start publishing to my feed I’ll be overrun in no time. It would be time to reconsider who I *really* want to hear from, and whether or not it’s worth liking their group.
As a small business owner, this is a mixed blessing: I still believe that consistently delivering relevant content is the best way to create relationships. So on one hand, I like the ability to reach my audience through multiple means, and will take take to make sure that what I publish matters to them. On the other hand, a lot of people (like me, as outlined above) will be thinking harder about which pages to Like - so it may become more difficult to attract “fans.”
Either way, thanks for the update. It’s big news.
What exactly is a ‘Like Farm’? Doesn’t it require you to like something first? And also, can you not unlike it anytime?
I’m not sure of all the implications of this — I find Facebook clumsy and difficult to grasp, but one thing I know. Most of the changes we are going to see on social media in the next 18 months come from a desperate attempt to monetize these sites and make the “useful” for businesses.
The problem is that with that commercialization they end up damaging the user experience for regular users who don’t use facebook to be “sold” something. Sounds like this is a way to extend the “reach” of businesses.
Twitter is in a worse situation, at least Facebook has profits.
It won’t be as much of a spam festival as many pf you are saying. Yes it will be abused and Facebook will disconnect the domain from the service. Just like they’ve done with thousands of fan pages already.
Doug
I don’t think it looks toooooo spammy…
I’ve taken an screenshot of how it looks when I shared this on my facebook page. I’d post it but don’t want to spam this post lol
If you haven’t seen it yet it tags the original poster and says they have “shared” a link. I guess this will be another way to determine popularity?
Emma
Oh dear.
I can this will add a lot of value to the publishers of content, ideas and ads but what about the end user experience?
As has been mentioned above, it will become a spam fest in no time at all. This needs to be measured with opt outs - highly visible opt outs and no retrospective opt in on all past ‘likes’.
As a publisher of blogs that can be liked I am reluctant to ‘push’ future content onto people who liked one particular aspect.
Has facebook heard of ‘attraction’ marketing?
Will pages be able to send news feed history just once or for how long? Will users become a Fan of the page where the object was?
Spamfest here we come. This experiment won’t last long
is there any way to see a list of non-facebook pages/sites/articles I’ve liked since they started? I want to see where and when I clicked that button and find a way to undo this. I don’t mean the list of Pages I’ve liked on Facebook itself or the “Likes and Interests” in my profile, but every article I’ve liked and appears in my stream. Where do I find this information?
Any thoughts?
Hmm. As usual I’m conflicted here. I can see how this will be useful for publishers. I can also see how this can get annoying for facebook users. I’m going to wait and see how this plays out.
It’ll be open for spamming. This will break havoc. I wonder what Google thinks?
Like - no pun intended - many posters have already stated, SPAM was my first thought to this. Should be interesting to see how this all plays out…
actually this isnt so bad, the first time you get something on your wall, just click on hide and you never see their crap again.
Just because people “Like” an article you can’t assume permission to push articles onto my feed. I don’t like the idea of this and I’m going to have to “Unlike” many articles I’ve previously “Liked”. I don’t want my feeds cluttered up!
Hello,
It was indeed a great achievment to me for having this post,this is what i really like to e seeing in facebook not just savvy waste of time commented.
Thanks,keep the good things going my dear.
Spam will be a problem, but imagine liking a product on an e-commerce site and being given updates on stock-quotas, how-to videos and information regarding what you’ve bought/would like to buy.
I think this is Beacon reimagined. I doubt it’ll last long due to spam/privacy concerns, but it will be interesting to follow.
Makes me hesitate “like”ing anything-including this article. That can’t be good.
So basically publishers can publish content to a user’s wall without requesting permission via facebook connect? If yes this will result in alot of spam and cause users think twice before liking a page.
Hmm, this is big news and I think everyone is over reacting to the issue of SPAM. Its nearly become habit to shout that when something becomes more “open”. I think its more a matter of being honest and actually only sharing what you really “like” and wish to share and wouldn’t this in turn actually cut out SPAM… maybe I am wishing for to much or misunderstanding the implications but I think this is FaceBooks final aim really.
Is FB that hard up for money? I mean, really? Nothing wrong with making a buck, but there are limits. This is clearly pro-advertiser/pro-spammer and anti-user. But I’m sure FB feels the same about eliminating spam and excessive advertising the same way they do about privacy… that not wanting to be spammed is some kind of ossified, old fashioned, out of date concept in the digital age. This is the reason why I tend not to use FB much anymore, and refuse to link to it on my own site or “like” things from other sites via the PB icons.
Ummm, this ability has existed since Like buttons were first introduced. You could ALWAYS go through and visit the administration page for your Open Graph object (which every Like button actually is). From there you could publish updates to the persons who have clicked that Like button.
All this new update has added is a programmatic way to do this through the Graph API.
This article hugely missed the point.
It’s concerning how pleased you are with the potential of more spam.
Eventually ever page will have FB functionality.
It’s another way for them to get reach.
My sites that run on FB Like Script have been doing brilliantly - but occasionally Facebook tweaks things to stop everything working!
Ben
FBLikeScript.com
This has been available since they launched the like buttons. My guess is that they are now just trying to make it more evident that this is possible.
Facebook = user exploitation.
This will be the new spam
It looks like a way to get more ad revenue. facebook is now ready to challenge Google
Apart from ad revenue, this will help developers and publishers to engage more users using viral content.
If you click on “Accounts” on the top right, choose “edit friends” and “ALL CONNECTIONS” on the left side, You can ‘unlike’ any thing you have liked.
I delted MANY last night!
Thanks for the update. Changes can sometimes be scary but this particular Facebook change has massive potential. We responded to you and DownloadSquad.com on our blog. DLS had a different perspective about the potential spam.
So finally the time to quit facebook has come. The last thing I want is a thousand websites that I happened to like spamming my news feed. Good bye.
wonderfull
Thanks for the article.
I’ve been posting things to my company’s FB wall, but they don’t show up on the feeds of those that “like” the company’s page. How can I do this? How can I “publish content to the feeds of all people who liked a specific page?”
Cheers.