In September, Facebook announced the Timeline, the new open graph, and social actions (verbs, essentially), which would let people go well beyond the “like” when sharing Facebook content.
“[We’re] going to make it so you can connect to anything you want in any way you want,” said Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. “Last year we added the nouns, this year we added the verbs.”
So far, we’ve only seen a glimpse of these verbs from the early apps – things like “listen” and “watch”.
VentureBeat is reporting that it has heard from a source familiar with the matter that the final stages of testing for the “remaining pieces of Facebook’s new Open Graph” happening, and that the broader actions will be releasing any day now.
So, soon, you should start being able to populate your Timeline with all kinds of things you are doing. And guess what: this is going to benefit advertisers.
As an advertiser, Facebook is about to become an incredible targeting tool, if it wasn’t already. “Advertisers can target users based on these Open Graph Actions. E.g. the app developer above could target users who ‘Drank a Cappuccino’, perhaps to suggest other drinks they may like to try,” Facebook says. “This is achieved by including an action_spec in the targeting of the AdGroup.”
These actions are also going to be a great way to get users more engaged with your content. Hopefully there are some verbs that apply to what you do. “For example, you could create an Open Graph app called ‘my_app’ that contains a ‘drink’ action with a number of associated Open Graph Objects which can be drunk e.g. ‘Latte’, ‘Tea’, ‘cappuccino’, etc.,” says Facebook on its action specs page. “When a user triggers the ‘Drank a tea’ action it is shared to their timeline.”
Facebook ads are already becoming more popular with businesses, and this should push that popularity up even more. Combine that with the mobile ads that are said to be coming, and Facebook should have a hell of revenue machine as a public company. The IPO, is expected this year.
When asked for more on the actions, a Facebook spokesperson told WebProNews, “We’re currently focused on the rollout of Timeline, which already features several apps in the news, music and video categories. In the coming weeks, Timeline apps will launch in more categories, including fitness, sports, food, and travel.”
