YPG ‘Likes’ Facebook’s Social Plug-ins

While lots of local publishers are using Facebook Connect as a sign in, to transmit user reviews and other actions back to the Facebook news feed, Canada’s YPG appears to be the first that has integrated the new social plug-ins and “Like” button in particular. (I wrote a long piece at SEL about the new social plug-ins and Open Graph announced by Facebook yesterday.)

Every profile on Yellowpages.ca now has a “Like” button. And when I show up at the site (if I’m signed in to Facebook) I’ll see the activity on the site from my Facebook friends (for “instant personalization”).

Here’s how it looks. First without the FB log in:

And now with me logged in to Facebook and “Liking” a business:

My Like goes off to my FB news feed (and later a dedicated area on my profile page). My friends’ recent activities on the site are immediately shown to me:

Some of this was already going on with Facebook Connect but the new tools and capabilities that Facebook announced yesterday go well beyond that. For example, by “Liking” a business you’ve become a Fan (in the old Facebook Fan sense), which means that if you’ve permitted it with  your privacy settings every time there’s an update associated with that “Liked” business you’ll get a feed notification, including potentially an email if that’s the way the site is set up. The equivalent things would have happened if you had become a Fan of a company or business on Facebook itself. In other words, the Like button makes any profile or website into a Facebook Fan page.

In the case above I’ve effectively become a fan/follower of the sushi restaurant. And it’s a kind of “stealth CRM” vehicle for sites and businesses that choose to exploit that potential.

Every single local publisher will undoubtedly become part of this system, which is now much easier to implement than the old FB Connect.

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