At the start of today’s f8 keynote, Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg said that today’s announcements are going to be the “most transformative thing we’ve ever done for the web.” And I fully agree with him. Thanks to Facebook’s new technologies, social media will soon no longer be part of the Internet… it will simply become the Internet.

The web has always consisted of links between different bits of information. Up until this date those links are mostly based on similar content. If you’re visiting a page about whales, you might see links to different websites offering more information on whales species, whale watching tours, etc. Facebook is now aiming to replace these simple “content” links with “people” links. It’s all part of what Facebook calls the Open Graph.

The Open Graph places people at the centre, creating a smarter, more personalized web. The Open Graph is really just an extension that will connect all the current Social Graphs out there. For example, Zuckerberg pointed out that Facebook is currently only mapping the graph for social connections between people, Yelp is mapping the graph for businesses, Pandora for music, etc. Facebook’s Open Graph will aim to link all these social graphs together, making the Internet more social and personalized, smarter and more semantically aware.

For example, Pandora (an American-based online radio) will immediately play songs from bands that you’ve liked across the web. While you play music, the site will show you friends who also like the song, and you can click to see what else they like. I can see a similar integration with YouTube reduce the world’s productivity by at least 40%.

How does the Pandora website know all of this information about you and your friends even though you may have never visited Pandora before? Well, they don’t, but they can display this information using Facebook’s new social plugins that tap into the power of the Open Graph. For those worried about privacy, none of your data is actually shared with the site when you view social plugins. Social plugins pull information directly from Facebook and the site has no access to the data.

One of these social plugins is the new and improved “Like” button, which you will soon see everywhere on the web. Everywhere! For example, people who are already logged into Facebook (and almost everybody is) will be able to click “Like” for stories on CNN without having to leave or log into the CNN website at any time. There is almost no friction to sharing anymore, which means we’ll most likely see a dramatic increase in the volume of sharing (and that is fantastic).

The cool thing about this new Like button is that it is part of a much larger set of interconnected social plugins. For instance, the new Activity Stream plugin, which offers you an easy way of displaying relevant Facebook news feed items from other people on your own website. As a result, a first time visitor who’s completely unfamiliar with your website can immediately see that four of their friends visited your website before and liked several of your articles. This will instantly create a certain amount of trust and give the user extra initiative to explore your website, thus greatly improving website interaction. Other features that are worth Googling are “Recommendations”, a new “Sign in With Facebook” button and the Social Bar — Facebook’s “all in one social experience” that lives at the bottom of your website.

But the best part of it all is that it’s incredibly simple to implement all of this. I mean, anyone who has ever worked with the Facebook API in the past knows it can be a real pain to get any type of Facebook interaction going. But Facebook seems to be changing that in huge way. Integrating Facebook with your website will now be as simple as placing just one line of HTML code. Just one. Amazing. This single line loads all the required Facebook stuff in an iframe and that’s it. You’re done, and they do the rest.

So far, I am very impressed and can’t wait to see this in action. You can already see some of this cool stuff in action by visiting their partner websites like imdb.com and yelp.com. Notifications of the new features and their implications on your privacy are also already popping up on Facebook.

Oh, and as side note, there was also a bit about Facebook credits. They seem to be trying to turn it into a global online currency. It’s a bit scary really, but to be honest, I wouldn’t be surprised if we could trade Facebook credits on the Forex a few years from now. Between Facebook and Google, it will be interesting who takes over the world first.

Originally from Amsterdam, Mike made the move from Europe to Atlantic Canada in 2003. Attending the University of New Brunswick, he earned a bachelors degree in Computer Science with first class honours in Multimedia Systems. During his university career, Mike was recognized for his outstanding communication, leadership and interpersonal skills. Before joining our team, Mike used his European sense of style to work as a freelance designer and developer for six years. Having touched a diverse range of projects, from print design to business identity development, he found his true passion working with the web. Mike joined trampoline for its strong creative focus. A meticulous graphic designer and web developer at heart, he aims to create original media with a strong focus on usability and web standards. When Mike isn’t busy designing websites and slinging around HTML and PHP code, he’s usually playing a variety of sports, including water polo, tennis and baseball, exploring the outdoors with sea kayaking and skiing or pursuing his passion for photography — a hobby that will continue to break his bank account again and again.