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29 March 2024

Fast-growing Facebook aims for more social web

The Facebook logo is displayed on a computer screen in Brussels April 21, 2010. Over the past six years, social networking has been the Internet's stand-out phenomenon, linking up more than one billion people eager to exchange videos, pictures or last-minute birthday wishes. (REUTERS)

Published
By Reuters

Facebook's user base is growing at its fastest rate ever, the online social network company said Wednesday as it rolled out features that link the company's platform more tightly with outside web sites.

Facebook's 'open graph'' would let people see information tailored to their lives and interests wherever they are on the Web, the company's chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said.

The idea, Zuckerberg said, is to make Facebook the centre of the increasingly social and more personalized experience that people encounter when they use the internet. Facebook also wants to make it easier for other websites to share information across Facebook's user base of more than 400 million people.

``We're building towards a Web where the default is social, every application and product will be designed from the ground up to use real identity,'' he said.

Facebook users would be able click on a 'like'' button next to content on sites such as CNN and ESPN, and share the information on their Facebook profiles in a better way than the ''share'' button that many sites use.

Those sites in turn could display content from a Facebook user's network. For example, a box on CNN.com could show that three friends ``liked'' a certain story.

Facebook has also partnered with review site Yelp and music discovery service Pandora, to enable more widespread sharing of users' preferences across those sites.

In addition, Facebook and Microsoft, which owns a small piece of the social network, are launching a document creation and sharing application, based on Office 2010, that can be accessed through Facebook and an outside site.

Facebook, which has faced criticism for sharing too much user information, deflected questions about privacy concerns.

In a press conference, Zuckerberg said applications on third-party sites will share no more information than before.

``I think what this actually means is that people are going to be sharing less of their information when they don't need to around the Web,'' he said.

Since its creation in a Harvard dorm room in 2004, Facebook has emerged as one of the Internet's most popular destinations and is increasingly challenging established Web powerhouses like Yahoo and Google.

Facebook is the fourth-most visited site in the United States, and displaced Google in January to become the top U.S. site by total number of Web pages viewed.