Facebook's f8: Privacy and the Open Graph

Facebook's annual developer conference is going down as we speak in California. It started this Wednesday, and right from the get-go, Zuck was making some big announcements during the opening keynote. Here are some of the takeaways from the information that has come out of the conference so far, in no particular order. Facebook Connect is dead in favor of OAuth 2.0. Facebook Credits are still on the way. Facebook's Social Bar goes up against the Meebo bar and Wibya. And, Facebook has taken over the web in the form of their new Open Graph.

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Facebook Snaps Up Divvyshot

Group photo sharing service Divvyshot has been snatched up by Facebook.  The acquisition isn't a partnership so much as it's a digestion.  The existing Divvyshot site will be shut down in about 6 weeks time.  All current users (about 40,000) must migrate their photos off before the deadline or they will vanish along with the site.

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Facebook Fragments Yet Again With Community Pages

Okay, I'm not even going to pretend I understand the need for a distinction between Facebook Fan Pages and Facebook Community Pages. Facebook's fragmentation is getting to be as bad as Android's. As far as I understand, Facebook's new addition to their lineup is intended for pages that are "less official" than those who might use a fan page. For example, pages for a group to gather around a garage sale or pep rally should create a Community Page as opposed to a Fan Page.

The other distinction is that Fan Pages are run by one user. Community pages are intended to be run by one user, until the page becomes popular, until the page becomes incredibly popular. At this point, Facebook gets concerned that the one user might use the page to spam users, so on Community pages, it hands the reins over to the community, much like a wiki. I didn't realize how urgent the need was for this. But, thankfully Facebook has stepped in to fix the problem. I'm glad they're focusing on this, instead of users' privacy.

Facebook Setting Up To Ignore Privacy Concerns Yet Again

Facebook is changing their privacy policy yet again in gearing up for this year's f8 conference. This time, changes are being made to the way Facebook shares data with services that users have linked to via Facebook Connect. Specifically, Facebook wants to allow third parties who have already connected with you through Facebook to have access to other data that you never agreed to let them have. This sounds an awful lot like the last time Facebook made waves with privacy by doing a poor job of dealing with how user's data is stored. Facebook already has a reputation for how it deals with privacy concerns, and this just seems to add to the list of reasons why.

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Facebook "Likes" Language Changes

Users on Facebook will soon no longer be "Becoming a fan" of pages on the site. According to MediaMemo users "Like" things on Facebook twice as often as they "Become a fan" of pages. Fan pages will now as users to like them instead of becoming a fan. This shift is purely in language. No changes to the feature itself will be made, and everything will continue to function as it has. Facebook says many users have a hard time understanding that "Becoming a fan" means that they will start receiving updates on their profile, so the shift to "Like" makes more sense.

I'm all for this change. I don't like becoming a fan of things because much of the stuff I'm invited to, I'm not really a fan of. But I do tend to like some of them. Even though I realize it doesn't change how I'm interacting with the page, I feel more comfortable saying "Yeah, I like that." than "Yeah, I'm a fan."

What do you think of the impending change? Let us know in the comments!