Last week, at its F8 Facebook Developer Conference, Facebook shocked the Internet community with the latest development in its Open Graph API project.

Now, Facebook will not just share Facebook members’ latest ‘Likes’ with other Facebook members, but also with (and ABOUT) third party websites and Facebook advertisers.

Confused? Let me explain… including why you, as an Internet marketer, MUST know about the Facebook Like technology… WHAT you need to know about it… and why it may just be a time bomb about to explode across the Internet…

Firstly, if you’re one of the 400 million Facebook members on the planet, you’ll know that one of social network’s features is the ability for you to share your ‘likes’ with your Facebook friends (and others, depending on your privacy settings). You probably typed in some of your ‘likes’ into your Facebook profile when you created a Facebook account.

Now, each time you go to a third party website that displays the Facebook ‘Like’ button (see the bottom of this post for an example), and you click on that Like button, Facebook will update your Facebook profile so that others can see what your latest likes are.

In other words, if you click on the Like button at the bottom of this post, that will get updated in your Facebook profile. As a result, anyone privy to your profile will see that you like this post. At the same time, if one of your Facebook friends visits this post they’ll see that one of their friends (i.e. YOU) likes this post.

All well and good, but there is MUCH more to the Facebook Like button than that. In fact, there are major implications for at least THREE (3) kinds of Internet marketers (of which you may be ALL three).

1. Website content publishers

As a content publisher – whether you publish articles, blog posts, videos, audio interviews, etc – the benefits of adding the Facebook Like button are fairly straightforward.

Each time a Facebook member Likes an article, blog post, video or interview, etc – their profile is updated with an item to say that they like that item of content.

Not only that, but all their friends’ Facebook ‘Walls’ will also be updated with the new Like… allowing these friends to click on the link to visit the content.

From these friends’ point of view, the fact that someone they know and trust has endorsed the content provides them with greater incentive to also visit the content.

From YOUR point of view as a content publisher this endorsement will ideally bring more visitors – and higher quality visitors at that – to your website.

But that’s not tall…

2. Online store owners

As indicated above, by adding the Facebook Like button to your site, you provide Facebook members with the ability to not just ‘vote’ on your content (like many of the other standard referral buttons) but you also extend the life and impact of that vote by having it appear in their Facebook profiles.

Similarly, if you run an online store and sell products, you can place a Like button below each product on offer, letting visitors record whether or not they like that product.

You can accomplish even more than that, however…

Consider how Levis is implementing the Facebook Like technology in its new ‘Friends Store‘ (Big thanks to Ed Dale at for alerting me to this example.)

You don’t have to be logged in to Facebook to see how Levis is harnessing the Like button. Just look below any pair of jeans and you’ll see the number of Likes for that item. Look to the right and you’ll see some of the Facebook members who Like Levis.

When you’re logged into Facebook, however, you can see what YOUR Facebook friends like. But not only that…

Look to the right again, and you’ll see who – among your Facebook friends – has an upcoming birthday.

Hmmm… you’re on the Levis site… you know whose birthday is coming up… you may even know that one of these friends has specified a particular pair of jeans they like…

So what better idea than to get your friend this pair of jeans for their birthday!

By integrating the Facebook Like technology into its site, Levis not only gets the ability to attract traffic to its site, but also has a POWERFUL way of converting visitors into customers.

3. Facebook advertisers

Again, kudos to Ed Dale for being one of – if not the first – Internet marketers to highlight the rather profound implications for Facebook advertisers of the Facebook Like button (see Facebook Bombshell – How Did Everyone Miss This).

Indeed, Facebook advertisers are not just set to benefit, but Facebook’s Like button initiative may well see many more Internet marketers BECOME Facebook advertisers.

Why? Because now that Facebook is allowing and encouraging Facebook users to update their Likes in real-time on their Facebook profiles based on what products, services and content they like, Facebook advertisers will be able to better target their campaigns based on that information.

Remember, Facebook’s advertising platform gives advertisers the ability to target their advertisements to Facebook users based on their demographic and psychographic information – including their likes and preferences.

Now, with up to 400 million users updating their likes, Facebook advertisers will have the freshest possible information about people with which to target their ads.

But it’s going to get even better for Facebook advertisers – and Facebook – although perhaps not so much for Google, Bing or other ad networks.

Let me put it this way: right now, Facebook advertisers will be able to use the updated Likes to really, really, really target their ads on Facebook. With its 400 million members Facebook is providing a HUGE value-add to advertisers.

But how long do you think it will be before Facebook rolls out its ad platform to the Internet as a whole? How long do you think it will be before you, as an advertiser, can buy ads on Facebook’s ad platform which are then displayed on third party sites based on the Likes of their audiences?

Is it too far-fetched to imagine that if I Like a particular movie e.g. “Kick-Ass” on The Internet Movie Database website then IMDb might run ads for other superhero movies I might like?

Or that if a ton of my friends have Liked “Kick-Ass”, then IMDb might recommend that movie to me?

Or that if a ton of my friends have Liked a superhero comic book (i.e. something IMDb DOESN’T sell) then IMDb might display an ad for that superhero comic book… simply because it’s running Facebook ads and Facebook knows MY Likes, the likes of MY FRIENDS, and also knows the CONTEXT (i.e. the website) in which I might be most likely to respond to such an ad?

Of course, Facebook will have to tread carefully in order to respect its members’ privacy. Actually, EXTRA carefully since the social network has already attracted a lot of criticism over its privacy policies. But assuming the social network can ensure that advertisers only target ads to Facebook members who optin to this kind of psychographic-behavioral targeting, then it will be COMPELLED to expand its ad platform along these lines.

And that’s why Google, Bing and all the other ad networks should be worried.

Not so much because people won’t keep on using and responding to ads on the search engines. But because more publishers – in response to demand by advertisers wanting better advertising results – will likely embrace an ad platform that lets advertisers target consumers when they are, literally, in the right place, at the right time.

Google, Bing and the other companies running ad networks could lose thousands and thousands of websites currently running their ads…

Now, Facebook hasn’t said it will expand its ad platform to third party websites, but it’s a logical next step.

Which is why all the Facebook Like buttons you’ll see as you traverse the web may be something akin to ‘advertising time bombs’ – tick, tick, tick – about to explode any time now…

Related Articles:

• Who Else Wants To Survey 500 Million Facebook Users?
• Twitter Facts and Figures: What Internet Marketers Need To Know
• idealab Launches TweetUp as The ‘Adwords / Adsense For Twitter’
• Twitter Introduces ‘Promoted Tweets’ Advertising Program (aka How Twitter – and Internet Marketers? – Will Monetize Twitter)
• KN Dimestore Lets You Run Online Ad Surveys In Streaming Video

This entry was posted on Monday, April 26th, 2010 at 7:32 am and is filed under Conversion, Feature, News and Comment, Online Advertising, Search Marketing, Social Media, Technology, Traffic. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.