Open Graph connects people with apps and websites through actions and objects. It publishes these actions and objects as stories and aggregations on Facebook. Graph Rank is Facebook's algorithm that determines what activity is shown, organizing the massive amount of posts. While complex, Graph Rank considers affinity, weight, and time decay. Optimizing for it through user-generated content, photos, comments, and object mapping can help drive millions of users through viral sharing on Facebook.

1. FACEBOOK OPEN GRAPH
June 20, 2012

2. HOW OPEN GRAPH WORKS

3. HOW DOES OPEN GRAPH WORK?
•Connects people with your product through actions
and objects

4. WHAT ARE ACTIONS AND OBJECTS?
• Actions: the high level interactions a user can perform in
your app; verbs to act upon objects
• Objects: entities that users can act upon in your app

5. 2010: THE LIKE BUTTON
• Anywebpage + a bit of
code = an object
• Userscan connect with
any object on FB via Like
Button

6. 2011: EXPANDED VERBS
Read
• FBallows other verbs
besides “like” to connect
with objects
Watch
• Apps can define their own
actions that connect with
objects
• Apps can automatically
publish stories when users
complete an action Listen

7. ACTIONS
• Defined by application
• Publish
instance through
graph API
ACTION

8. OBJECTS
• Web pages with meta tags
OBJECT

9. BUILT IN ACTIONS AND OBJECTS
Built in Actions Built in Objects
*must be used with built in objects *can be used with custom or built in actions
• Like • Article
• Follow • Book
• Listen • Blog
• Read • Profile (external)
• Watch • Movie
• TV episode
• TV show
• Video

10. HOW DOES OPEN GRAPH WORK?
•Connects people with your product through actions and
objects
•Publishes actions and objects into stories and
aggregations

11. WHAT ARE STORIES AND
AGGREGATIONS?
• Stories: actions and objects are published into stories in
the ticker, timeline and newsfeed
• Aggregations: timeline aggregations, defined by the
application, showcase stories in a “structured and
interesting” way

12. Stories
in the
ticker
Aggregations
on the
timeline

13. STORIES PUBLISH ACTIONS AND
OBJECTS
Jeff Sherlock commented on an item on Pose
Bryant Lee nommed a dish on Foodspotting
Jackie Chang started reading a book on Kobo

14. AGGREGATIONS PUBLISH GROUPS
OF STORIES

15. HOW ARE STORIES CONFIGURED?
Item Layout
Map Layout
Number Layout

16. HOW STORIES ARE PUBLISHED?

17. HOW ARE AGGREGATIONS
CONFIGURED?
Grouped by object:
Date to Display = object
e.g. “top artists”
Grouped by action:
Date to Display = action
e.g. “recent photos taken”

18. HOW ARE AGGREGATIONS
CONFIGURED (CONT’D)?
List favorite objects; recent activity Item highlights single interesting action Number meaningful macro view
Gallery helpful when objects are meaningful Table highlights qualitative data Map highlights single geolocation attributes

19. HOW ARE AGGREGATIONS
PUBLISHED?
Date Availability:
enough stories in a “given
time”
Feedback:
calculated based on how
“engaged” users are with the
post

20. HOW DOES OPEN GRAPH WORK?
•Connects people with your product through actions and
objects
•Publishes actions and objects into stories and
aggregations
•Organizes the massive amount of activity throughout the
platform using graph rank

21. WHAT IS GRAPH RANK?
• Graph Rank: the algorithm
Facebook uses to determine what
Open Graph activity will be distributed
throughout the timeline, news feed
and ticker
• Facebook determines “interesting
stories” and “social patterns”
• Facebook creates own version of
aggregations

22. WHAT IS GRAPH RANK?

23. GRAPH RANK IS THE GATEKEEPER
OF THE NEWS FEED...
... BUT IT HAS A FORMULA THAT
CAN BE UNDERSTOOD.

24. WHAT IS GRAPH RANK?
Affinity Weight Time Decay
Affinity is a measure the relevancy A basic formula which decides that Over time, a post’s relevancy decays,
of the Open Graph post to the certain pieces of content are more thus making it less important and
user, using factors like similar likely to appear in the News Feed pushing it down the feed.
interests and friend behavior. than others. More interactions with
a post (comments and likes)
increases its weight.

25. HOW DOES OPEN GRAPH WORK?
•Connects people with your product through actions and
objects
•Publishes actions and objects into stories and
aggregations
•Organizes the massive amount of activity throughout the
platform using graph rank
•But why should we care?

26. THE POWER OF OPEN GRAPH

27. WHY SHOULD WE CARE ABOUT
OPEN GRAPH?
• Open Graph has the capability to bring in millions of users to
your product

28. CASE STUDIES: ENDOMONDO
• 75%increase in traffic in 3
months with Open Graph
• 150%increase in the
number of shares on
Facebook

29. CASE STUDIES: FOODSPOTTING
• 400% increase in referral
traffic from Facebook in 3
months
• 200% increase in monthly
active users

30. CASE STUDIES: POSE
• 5X increase in daily sign ups

31. CASE STUDIES: KOBO
• 50% increase in daily traffic
from Facebook in 5 months
with Open Graph
• 90% increase in daily
registrations

32. WHY SHOULD WE CARE ABOUT
OPEN GRAPH?
• Open Graph has the capability to bring in millions of users to
your product
• There
are discernible patterns in the Graph Rank algorithm
and we can learn how to optimize for them

33. MY OPEN GRAPH EXPERIMENT
• 10 days
• Over 200 Open Graph postings
•4 test accounts
• 25 unique configurations
• onegoal: to find patterns in
the way stories aggregate
on the timeline and the
news feed through the
graph rank algorithm

34. GRAPH RANK HOT OR NOT
*when two friends have shared the
same post
*posts that include user generated
photos and comments
*similar posts occurred over a
period of days
*similar posts occurred over a
period of hours
*almost all posts

35. KEY FINDINGS
• Facebook’sown aggregations for News Feed often result
from multiple friends acting on the similar objects
• Usergenerated photos
have overwhelming weight
- posts with photos do not
aggregate with non photos
• Aggregationsrely on a
certain amount of posts
over an extended period
of time

36. HOW CAN WE APPLY THESE
LESSONS TO OPTIMIZE GRAPH RANK?
Affinity Weight Time Decay

37. OPTIMIZE GRAPH RANK
Weight
•User generated contents always increases graph rank
•Integrate with Facebook social plugins
•Add photo taking into the share flow
•Add location/place data to your posts

38. OPTIMIZE GRAPH RANK
Affinity
•Choose action verbs that people want to talk about
•Attach them to social, shareable experiences
•Send user generated comments/likes to Facebook
through API
•Pose questions in posts
•Attach action and object properties

39. WHAT ARE ACTION AND OBJECT
PROPERTIES?
• Actions properties: attributes that describe the
published action instance; user generated content
• Objects properties: attributes that describe the object
page

40. ACTION PROPERTIES
• used to store instance-specific
data
• e.g. photos, comments, ratings,
reviews, etc.
• published with action instance
• user generated content
• default or custom

41. ACTION PROPERTIES
• Not all created equal
• Some have much more
weight than others

42. OBJECT PROPERTIES
• can be meta tags within the page or
objects themselves
• FB strongly recommends to create
objects that refer to objects
• Object mapping increases the
chances Facebook can find an
aggregation among friends

43. OBJECT MAPPING
Create objects that describe other objects to increase
the chances of Facebook finding an aggregation

44. OBJECT MAPPING
Users interact with objects to publish through Open Graph

45. OBJECT MAPPING
FB crawls the object pages to find patterns to aggregate
onto friends News Feeds

46. WHY SHOULD WE CARE ABOUT
OPEN GRAPH?
• Open Graph has the capability to bring in millions of users to
your product
• There
are discernible patterns in the Graph Rank algorithm
and we can learn how to optimize for them
• Once in the News Feed, powerful content goes a long way

47. THE VIRAL LOOP
• Will
not work
without engaging
content
• With engaging
content, is very
powerful but need
to gate it

48. WHAT IS OPEN GRAPH AND WHY
SHOULD WE CARE?
• Connects people with your • Open Graph has the
product through actions and capability to bring in millions
objects of users to your product
• Publishes actions and objects • There are discernible patterns
into stories and aggregations in the Graph Rank algorithm
and we can learn how to
• Organizes the massive optimize for them
amount of activity throughout
the platform using graph rank • Once in the News Feed,
powerful content goes a long
way

49. !e End