POV: Facebook Timeline and the Open Graph API
Facebook recently announced that it is making the Timeline Open Graph API available to developers of Facebook apps. The Timeline Open Graph API benefits marketers who create Facebook applications by:
- Displaying interactions with a brand’s Facebook application on to the Timeline of a Facebook member’s personal profile page.
- Spreading the Timeline activity virally into the News Feed and Ticker of that member’s Facebook friends.
- Increasing reach and bringing off-Facebook platform fan activities to Facebook.
It is widely anticipated that Facebook will release Timeline for brand pages around March 2012, and actions between fans and brands will then generate reciprocal publishing to the Timeline of both fan and brand pages. Many brands will find a sharp increase in fan engagement and a subsequent requirement for additional moderation of their Facebook page once this rollout takes effect.
We strongly urge that brands with Facebook apps implement the Timeline API as soon as possible. More information on building Open Graph apps and using the API can be found at https://developers.facebook.com/docs/opengraph/keyconcepts
In effect, social connections between fans and businesses can become etched as a public and permanent event within the personal history that is TimeLine.
