The new features were no secret, but we can now see them in action from 60 partner applications involved in the Open Graph Beta including Netflix, Hulu, Zynga, Spotify, Washington Post and Kobo.

So what’s the big deal?

2 New Features for Facebook Open Graph

Open Graph applications use elements of the development platform to provide ‘frictionless sharing’ to Facebookers’ Timelines and Tickers, which will also appear in friends’ News Feeds.

While Open Graph apps like the Washington Post have enabled social sharing for some time now, there are 2 major changes:

Gestures

Apps can use their own verbs (Gestures). In addition to ‘Like’ ‘Share’ and ‘Recommend,’ you can ‘Want,’ ‘Heart,’ ‘Listen,’ ‘Purchase’ — or pretty much any other verb within Facebook’s guidelines (of being simple, genuine and non-abusive). For example, Netflix could say ‘Colby just added Limitless to his queue.’

Frictionless Sharing

Frictionless Sharing is a warm and fuzzy term for auto-publishing. The new feature makes sharing the Gesture the default. Users permit the app to share once, rather than go through the ‘friction’ of approving every single action for publishing.

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What this means for Facebook users

If you hate the ticker and news feed now, you’re really going to hate it once it’s spammed with every single micro-activity your social network performs online.

You’ll also need to be careful about which apps you enable to auto-publish for you. Think about what you might not care to share, or what might not be an expression of yourself. For example, if you sample songs on Pandora, it doesn’t mean you like or recommend them. If you rent movies for your kids to watch, it doesn’t mean you are watching them.

What this means for Ecommerce

For brands, this certainly presents an opportunity to pump your word of mouth marketing full of steroids, particularly if your ecommerce business sells digital content such as books, news articles, music, movies and TV shows. Such products are inherently shareable — people have been discussing what they’ve watched and listened to read offline for years.

Physical goods retailers can leverage social and shopping apps that are already available, like Pinterest, Payvment or online gift card marketplace GiftRocket.

Commercial brands that successfully build relevant, experience-based apps like the Nike+ Running Monitor should get a lot of mileage out of these new features — no pun intended.

If you plan to develop or simply tweak your existing Facebook Application to include Gestures, check out the Open Graph Checklist. Facebook apps depend on approvals like the Apple App Store, and your Gestures must be in line with Facebooks requirements.

The F-Commerce Ecosphere

Commerce Inside Facebook.com

F-stores

Since the first in-Facebook retail transaction in 2009, many e-businesses have launched their own Shop tabs on their Facebook Pages that either redirect to their website or support real-money shopping right on the Page.

Facebook Ads and Sponsored Stories

Ads and Sponsored Stories are advertising options, messages appear in the sidebar and in the News Feed.

Facebook Credits

Facebook Credits is a virtual currency redeemable for digital goods (like games, movies and paid apps) and virtualgoods inside games (extra lives, character enhancements, etc). Facebook Credits can be used for micropayments inside mobile apps.

Considering Zynga sells 38,000 virtual items every second, this stuff is pretty popular with consumers. In 2010, Zynga’s virtual goods revenue topped 575 Million. The virtual goods insdustry is expected to total 1.2 Billion this year. Facebook Credits gift cards can be purchased online or in supermarket checkout aisles, or can even be earned as loyalty incentives. Through the Shopkick mobile app, customers can earn rewards points for store check-ins, similar to Foursquare. Move over Netflix, Credits can be redeemed for movie rentals too.

Open Graph Facebook Commerce

Facebook Mobile Platform

Facebooks mobile apps allow status updates on-the-go that push to Notifications, Requests, Timeline and News Feed, which may be shopping related.

Facebook Open Graph Beta

Open Graph 2.0 will move beyond the “Like,” “Share” and “Recommend” buttons to incorporate a new set of “verbs and nouns” like “I Like,” “I Want,” or “I Bought.” These actions can be pushed through Timeline, Newsfeed and Ticker. (Stay tuned).

So, “John Doe Likes this” could become “John Doe hearts iPhone 4S.” Of course, let’s not forget Facebook Connect and its many ecommerce applications, covered in detail in this post.

Facebook Social Plugins

Plug ins allow users to perform Facebook functions on your site. Think “Like,” “Share” and “Recommend” buttons, fan widgets and comment boxes. Facebook Places and Location Tab Did you know Facebook is stealthily cataloginging physical location data for every Facebook business Page? This data can be integrated online and in-store via the mobile experience. For example, Walmart uses one’s zipcodeto personalize its Page with offers, new products and special events. Another amazing (and a bit creepy) use for location info is Ticketmaster’s Interactive Seat Map, which lets you locate where your friends are sitting in a theater.

While I’d be hesitant to say anyone’s making a mint off selling physical goods through Facebook, many brands have found it an important space to connect with fans. (See how I avoided saying “engage” there?) There’s a lot of opportunity to play around with social marketing, even if you don’t use all aspects of the ecosystem. It’s an interesting animal to watch, we’ll see what 2012 brings in terms of innovation and opportunity with Facebook commerce. If you’d like to play with the full presentation deck, check it out below:

Looking for help with ecommerce strategy? Contact the Elastic Path Research & Strategy team at consulting@elasticpath.com to learn how our ecommerce strategy services can improve your business results.

Links from topically relevant and authoritative sites serve as signals of quality for the content they point to. The authority of a web page, or “Page Rank” in Google lingo, flows from one web page to another through (most) links, making link building a staple SEO strategy, but also one that has been abused by spammers. Thus, the “rules” around what makes a valuable link changes frequently, from an importance on reciprocal links and directories (abused through link farms), to keyword-rich anchor text (abused by paid links), to deep-links, and to today’s vogue – social links.

Search engines have confirmed that social signals do factor in their ranking algorithms, and that Facebook and Twitter links are considered, provided 301 redirects are used by URL shortening services. Social networks like Twitter may automatically add the rel=nofollow attribute, but links can be found by search engines through other data feeds.

Though we don’t know exactly which types of links are counted and which ignored, it’s reasonable that factors such as the authority of the social profiles that share and re-share links and their semantic relevance (the keywords surrounding the link) are important. Social linking strategies should keep this in mind.

Let’s explore 5 strategies:

Like, Share, Plus One Buttons

Simply having Twitter, Facbook and Google Plus buttons on your product pages and email campaigns is a link building strategy in itself. These “chicklets” enable passive word of mouth — free link building provided by your own site visitors, customers and fans. You may not get thousands of thumbs up on most of your products, but the long tail of sharing a few times over thousands of products can add up to a lot of exposure for very little effort.

There’s no harm in adding social buttons to product pages, email campaigns, home pages and microsites, other than the potential drag on your page load speed (like analytics code, they should be loaded after the core page content).

35 million Facebookers (1 in 4 account holders) have shared a product with their network, and 35% are more willing to buy a Liked product, so this is a no-brainer.

Your own accounts

Of course, you can leverage your own social media profiles to share new products, sale events and other content. But just submitting your own links likely doesn’t cut it. Search engines can figure out when links are shared by an account associated with a website (do you link to your site from your profile, hmmmm?) They want to see volume of shares or authoritative accounts sharing your links. Working on building up a strong fan base is essential, as is keeping them interested and making your content “share worthy” – complete with headlines that pique interest. Easier said than done, but a good challenge for your campaign strategists.

Hint: Surround your shared links with relevant keywords or hashtags, and try to include keywords in your site pages that you intend to share. Even if they are shrunk with link shorteners, search engines will follow the redirects and account for these keywords.

Hint, hint: Choose your URL shortener wisely. Though most use 301 redirects, some don’t. You’ll be safe with Goo.gl, Bit.ly, Ow.ly and Cli.gs. For more info, check out this article on which url shortening service you should use.

Paid tweets

If you want Kim Kardashian to gush about how much she hearts your handbags, you can pay your way into her feed through a service called – you got it – SponsoredTweets.com (the same folks that invented the PayPerPost service in 2006).

But note that sponsored tweets are, like paid posts and any other paid links, ethically to be disclosed with the hashtag #ad. Treat paid tweets as advertising, not link building.

The #ad hashtag may be a signal that search engines use to discount such links.

PR

Not Page Rank, but the other-other PR, public relations. You’ve used PR to reach out to bloggers and journalists, and these folk often have Twitter accounts as well. In fact, you’re more likely to get a tweet than a full blog post when you pitch, as they take far less time to craft.

Because tweets sent through influencers are suspected to have more clout with search engines, even one or two tweets of this sort can pay off. If you are reaching out with PR, suggest keywords be included in the tweet, like #hashtags.

Customer campaigns

Share-with-your-network calls-to-action in email and social network channels are an underused tactic. Social links are common, but they’re usually of the “Follow Us” variety, comfortably tucked away in header menus.

Or, footer menus.

I suggest being aggressive, and placing the calls-to-action in the content space of your email. Kohl’s is specific that the call-to-action is to forward the email message, rather than simply Like or Tweet the brand.

(Kohl’s example via Retail Email Blog)

Social linking is important – but it hasn’t replaced traditional backlinks. Stay tuned, next post we’ll revisit some of the tried-and-true strategies that can help keep your link profile growing and well-rounded.

Looking for help with your ecommerce strategy and site optimization? The Elastic Path research and consulting division is available to enterprises selling digital goods and services. For more information, visit us at http://elasticpath.com/ecommerce-consulting/ or contact us at consulting@elasticpath.com.

This time, it’s from antique and vintage marketplace Ruby Lane, which alerts shoppers when an item they are viewing is sitting in someone else’s cart or wishlist – suggesting they may miss out if they don’t act soon.

This tactic makes most sense when products exist in limited quantities, such as clearance and “last one” items. However, any business could display how many cart or wish lists a certain item is in as a form of social proof, as an alternative to showing Facebook Likes or Tweets.

Etsy does this by displaying a product’s admirers alongside social sharing buttons.

This can help fill the gaps if most of your products don’t have a bragworthy number of social shares from social networks. Use your own data!

Looking for help with ecommerce? Contact the Elastic Path consulting team at consulting@elasticpath.com to learn how our ecommerce strategy and conversion optimization services can improve your business results.