On their annual f8-event in September 2011, Facebook introduced the biggest change to the platform since 
News-Feed in 2006: Timeline & Open Graph In this briefing we want to give you an overview on these game-changing features, especially focussing on the opportunities they represent for publishers, developers and brands.

1. Facebook Timeline & Open Graph
Platform Briefing - Die Socialisten 08/2012
(Photo: Facebook.com)

2. Intro:
Facebook Open Graph / Timeline
On their annual f8-event in September 2011, Facebook
introduced the biggest change to the platform since
News-Feed in 2006:
Timeline & Open Graph
In this briefing we want to give you an overview on these
game-changing features, especially focussing on the
opportunities they represent for publishers, developers
and brands.
Let’s take a look at the new Timeline-profiles first...
die.socialisten.at
social network development

3. Cover - Fill this wide,
open space with a unique
image that represents you
best. It's the first thing
people see when they visit
your timeline.
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4. Stories - Share and
highlight your most
memorable posts,
photos and life
events on your
timeline. This is
where you can tell
your story from
beginning, to
middle, to now.
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5. Timeline-stories are
basically a two-
column, chronological
stream of all your
activitiy on Facebook:
Photos, Checkins,
Status-Updates, Likes,
Friends...
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6. Watch out! Apps can publish
to your Timeline as well!
Instead of the good-old
Wall-Posting, Timeline-apps
can publish and display all
sorts of actions!
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social network development

7. Intro:
Facebook Open Graph / Timeline
The basic idea behind Timeline-/Open Graph-Apps:
People already are using apps (on Facebook, on the Web, Mobile).
People are doing all kinds of things on these apps (listening to
songs, watching movies, publishing what books they read, recording
their sports-activities etc.). Let’s call these activities ”actions”.
Now, let people continue using their apps the way they are already
doing it (no need to force them into new “Facebook-Canvas-Apps”).
Instead: let them publish all actions they want to their Timeline-
profile, by connecting your app to the Open Graph!
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social network development

8. Rewind:
Open Graph Protocol
Released in 2010, Open Graph Protocol allowed publishers to
connect their websites, blogs, apps with the Facebook Social Graph.
How? By adding the Like-Button:
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9. Open Graph Protocol connected users and objects with one type of
edge - the “like”. The objects (mostly articles, videos...) are
incorporated into Facebooks social graph.

10. Intro:
Facebook Open Graph / Timeline
With Timeline / Open Graph, Facebook allows developers to publish
almost any kind of connection between users and objects.
Objects can be any piece of content (music, video, article...), but
also more app-specific things - a running-route, a comment on a
book, a recipe...
Actions can be all kinds of verbs - read, listen to, watch, cook,
recommend, collect, run, comment...
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social network development

11. With Open Graph, users can connect with objects with all sorts
of actions! Everything is represented in Facebooks social graph.

12. Intro:
Facebook Open Graph / Timeline
How & when are Open Graph Actions published?
In some cases, actions can be published automatically,
after a user has consumed content for a while (Audio,
Video, News).
However, users should always be able to easily un-publish and opt-out).
In most cases, actions should be published when the
user takes the particular action in your app.
When a comment is posted, a rating done, a friend followed etc.
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social network development

13. Intro:
Facebook Open Graph / Timeline
Two important caveats:
1. Users have to approve each app, before it is allowed to
publish to their timeline! Actions will never be published
without the users explicit consent!
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social network development

14. Intro:
Facebook Open Graph / Timeline
Two important caveats:
2. All actions a developer wants
to use, must be approved by
Facebook first!
The Approval-Process normally
takes a few days max.
Facebook checks on grammar,
user-experience, abuse etc.
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social network development

15. Intro:
Facebook Open Graph / Timeline
So, where are actions displayed, once they are being published?
They’re featured on the new Ticker in Realtime.
They’re featured in Postings & Aggregations on Timeline-Profiles.
They’re featured in Timeline-Views of the app on profiles.
They’re featured in the News-Feed, when deemed more important or
when several users performed similar actions (Cluster).
All your friends can see published actions, wether they have installed
the app, from which actions are originating from, or not!
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social network development

16. Intro:
Facebook Open Graph / Timeline
Next, we’ll demonstrate all kinds of exposure Open Graph-actions
can get by showing our first Open Graph App, the Last.fm
Scrobbler. Everytime a user listens to a song, the “Scrobble”-action
is published (think Spotify).
It’s approved by Facebook and you can try it out today:
http://www.facebook.com/LastfmScrobbler
Other Showcase-apps you should try out
to get to know Open Graph better include:
Spotify
http://www.spotify.com (Music)
Mein Klub
http://apps.facebook.com/meinklub (Sports)
Washington Post Social Reader
http://apps.facebook.com/wpsocialreader (News)
The Guardian
http://apps.facebook.com/theguardian (News) die.socialisten.at
social network development

17. Actions are displayed on the Ticker in
realtime. On Mouseover, a flyout shows
more detail on the preformed action &
object. The ticker is filtered by
GraphRank!
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18. Important & more frequent actions are
highlighted & clustered in the News-Feed!
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19. Frequently used apps and
media-types (“Music”,
“Video”, “News”) are
represented in boxes on
the top of a users
Timeline-Profile.
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20. Published actions are
also aggregated further
down the profile - f.e.
monthly summaries of
activity
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21. Users can add buttons for the apps
they like most on the top of their
profile - these buttons load the
“Timeline-View” of the app...
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social network development

22. The “Timeline-View” of an
app shows a chronological
view of all actions the
user has published with it.
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social network development

23. Why build for
Facebook Open Graph / Timeline?
Open Graph allows users to build their digital identity in the domain
of your app and bring this identity to Facebook.
Open Graph allows deep integration for apps & content with
Facebooks Social Graph. It allows your app to perfectly integrate with
Facebooks social channels (News-Feed, profiles/walls, Ticker).
Open Graph is also key for offering a personalized experience to
users. By using Social Plugins like Facepile & Recent Activity
personalization can be quickly added to apps.
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24. Why build for
Facebook Open Graph / Timeline?
Actions published through your App receive a great amount of
exposure on the platform, and therefore can drive massive traffic to
your app or content-site:
Early results from US-centric Showcase-apps are very promising:
Yahoo! News (+600% Referral-Traffic von Facebook)
The Independent (>1mio monthly active users)
The Guardian (4mio app installs)
Washington Post (3.5mio app installs)
Source: Facebook (https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/603/)
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25. The rollout -
Facebook Open Graph / Timeline
Facebook started the public rollout of Timeline (and also the
approval of Open Graph-apps) in January 2012.
At the bottom of https://www.facebook.com/about/timeline, you can
check out how many of your friends are on Timeline already
(for me it was about 86% in August 2012).
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social network development

26. The rollout -
Facebook Open Graph / Timeline
Eventually everybody will (have to) switch to Timeline. If you haven’t
been asked to switch by Facebook yet, here is an easy guide to turn
on Timeline manually:
http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/22/how-to-enable-facebook-timeline/
Remember: you can start launching Open Graph / Timeline-apps just
now! Users on the old profile just won’t be able to fully experience the
apps yet.
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27. When not to build for
Facebook Open Graph / Timeline?
- Apps with an very low expected user-base (<5k, better to have >10k)
- Apps running for a very limited amount of time
(short-live marketing campaigns)
- Apps accompanying marketing campaigns
without much or any user-interaction (think Tab-apps)
Instead:
- Think about merging several campaigns into one with a larger userbare.
- Think about how campaigns could grow into a long-lived, substantial app!
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social network development

28. Thanks!
Michael Kamleitner
michael.kamleitner@socialisten.at
+43 699 11607923