Facebook & Crowdsourcing The Web

So, Facebook announced some big changes this week and some of them have gotten us all very excited - basically because they involve crowdsourcing our (favourite thing on the Internet - as you can imagine)! Ultimately the changes are going to mean that as consumers of content on the web we are going to see Facebook popping up a lot more and theoretically we will be able to essentially use our friends (or at least those who are on Facebook) to crowdsource useful and interesting content. 

This might sound a bit on the confusing side so let me break it down: The first change is the addition of the Facebook 'Like' buttons to web pages outside of Facebook. So, for example if you see the Facebook 'Like' button on a CNN article (see image below) and you click on it  you are indicating that you find the content interesting and worthy of passing on - basically you would recommend it to a friend. Since you are recommending this content it will thus be pushed to your Facebook news feed where your friends can then also click through to it based on your recommendation. 

Another consequence of the 'Like' button popping up everywhere is that there is a possibility (depending on privacy settings) that your friends' profile photos will start popping up all over the web. So if you visit the CNN page above and see one of your friends smiling at you it means that they have clicked the 'Like' button and are recommending the content. It is important to note here that this will only happen if one of your friends has visited the page and liked it. So rest assured you are not going to have random people you dont know recommending content to you or, for that matter,  looking at your Facebook profile and recommendations.  

All of this sounds like a huge jump for Facebook especially when you consider that for the above functionality to work users will not be required to log-in on each site or bit of content they want to 'Like'. So if you go visit Last.fm looking for new music, recommendations from your Facebook friends will automatically show up as long as you have logged onto Facebook recently (i.e. within your current browsing session) There are obviously a whole bunch of privacy issues that come with these changes too. As a user you are going to have to decide how much info (your profile photo, likes and comments) you want visible - basically the recommendation is to check your privacy settings and make sure you are happy with what you are sharing.