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Facebook: Every Website is now a Facebook App

Web 3.0 has arrived.  Facebook changed the entire character of the Internet on April 21, 2010.  Come on!  A little “like” button?  What could be more trivial?

Let me explain.  Before 4/21/10 there was Facebook.  And there was the web.  They did not intersect.  Oh, sure, you could use your Facebook credentials to log on to other websites.  But that was it.  On Facebook there was a parallel universe of applications.  All living in the Facebook walled garden, and all playing by the Facebook rules – which insiders know changed mercurially seemingly every Tuesday.

Everyone within your circle of friends could know what you did on Facebook.  What you liked.  What you were a fan of.  What games you played and who your friends were.  But they didn’t know what you did outside of Facebook.  Out there in the Wild Wild Web.   That is unless you loved an article or website or product so much that you took the time and trouble to post a link and a comment in your status feed.  And many of us did that.  But not most of us.  And not that often.

But today everything is different.  Facebook tore down the walls of its own walled garden.  In so doing it marginalized most Facebook apps.  As to the rest, well, it rendered them irrelevant.  Why would I want an App that existed only within the walls of Facebook,  where I had to live and die by the Facebook rules and Terms of Service, when now I could host my app outside of Facebook, under my own rules, yet still embed the social graph of my users within Facebook?

This announcement is big.  Really big.  In essence, every website is now, potentially, a Facebook App.  One that can overlay your activity on their website with your activity on Facebook, with perhaps some day your activity on other websites.  Every website is now social.  And every website can now go viral.  All with a little “Like” button.

Look at the Washington Post for example, which implemented the Facebook sharing feature the day of the announcement:

Notice the upper right corner where I can see the Washington Post articles that are the most popular overall AND those articles that are most popular within my circle of friends….

And if I look at those most popular articles, a few dozen of them show up in a list as you can see below.  Very interesting.  Sort of like Digg on every site.  But without Digg……I don’t think I would be happy if I were Digg.  Or Reddit…..

Change like this is disruptive.  But in disruption comes opportunity for entrepreneurs.

Some questions that come to mind:  Is this good or bad for Twitter?  Could this be like an organ transplant for MySpace?  Will traditional media companies embrace this?  How will the media company trend to create their own walled gardens, behind their own toll booths, play with Facebook?  Will I be overwhelmed with thousands of “I like” status updates?  How do I find what matters in my status feed? How can I aggregate “likes” from my friends and see the top things my friends like?

Lots of questions mean lots of opportunities for entrepreneurs…..

PS….a memo to Congress.  Hands off Facebook.  If you don’t use it, don’t try to restrict it or outlaw it.  And no, it doesn’t count if your STAFF uses Facebook for you.  As the Washington Post once said, “If you don’t get it, you don’t get it.”