Facebook announces big changes - "Open Graph" is here.

During today's Developer's conference in San Francisco, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced some major changes to the Facebook platform which involve greater integration between it and the web. Dubbed "Open Graph," Zuckerberg describes it this way on the Facebook blog:

Three years ago at our first f8 conference for developers, I introduced the concept of the social graph, which is the idea that if you mapped out all the connections between people and the things they care about, it would form a graph that connects everyone together. Facebook has focused mostly on mapping out the part of the graph around people and their relationships.

At the same time, other sites and services have been mapping out other parts of the graph so you can get relevant information about different types of things. For example, Yelp maps out the best local businesses and Pandora maps out which songs are related to each other.

All of these connections are important parts of the social graph, but until now it hasn't been possible to easily share the connections you make on sites like Yelp or Pandora with your friends on Facebook. And you haven't been able to bring your friends from Facebook to share experiences on these sites or personalize them to you.

Today at our third f8, we are making it so all websites can work together to build a more comprehensive map of connections and create better, more social experiences for everyone. We have redesigned Facebook Platform to offer a simple set of tools that sites around the web can use to personalize experiences and build out the graph of connections people are making.

This next version of Facebook Platform puts people at the center of the web. It lets you shape your experiences online and make them more social. For example, if you like a band on Pandora, that information can become part of the graph so that later if you visit a concert site, the site can tell you when the band you like is coming to your area. The power of the open graph is that it helps to create a smarter, personalized web that gets better with every action taken.

Privacy experts worry this means Facebook users will be sharing a lot of personal data with the world. The new settings also "allow some select third-party Web sites to access and store users' personal information."  For that reason, a CNN reporter suggests you double-check your privacy settings:

At least for now, a person's likes and dislikes are only as visible as they want them to be.

But, if nothing else, that means you should probably double-check your privacy settings.

Go to Facebook, look at the top right of the screen and click the "Account" tab. Choose "Privacy settings" and then navigate to "Profile information."

Check the "likes and interests" setting. If you have that set to "everyone," then anyone on the Internet could see which web pages you have liked.

Here's a video of Zuckerberg's announcement earlier today.

Other changes are summarized on Facebook's blog and by CNNMoney.com.

(jbl)