At a conference last week, Facebook announced some dramatic changes about how its platform would be used to help make the web more social. In addition to being able to “like” and “recommend” things you want to share with your friends even when you are browsing non-Facebook sites, you can also see what things you and your friends like together. You’ll even notice that this blog post has the ability to “like” it now directly from my site. (Go ahead, try it!)
Several sites have partnered with Facebook to help make their sites more social. Below is an example on Pandora when you are listening to a song that one of your Facebook friends also likes it shows you.
Obviously this has many alarmed about privacy and how to control it. I don’t think it is quite as alarming as some are saying, but you should educate yourself on what it means. This post on the Facebook blog is pretty helpful. If you haven’t done so already, you should also review and adjust your privacy settings for the various types of connections.
I think a more social web is a good thing in general, but getting there must be done carefully and with proper education. What do you think? If you are a Facebook user do you only want to share with your friends and family inside the walls of Facebook or would you like to see Facebook extended and help make the rest of the web more social?