Facebook to turn more actions into advertisements

Frictionless sharing on the Facebook Open Graph could start to resemble Twitter's promoted tweets

Since the f8 conference in September, Facebook has been reinventing the profile newsfeed and finding new ways for brands to create consumer to consumer advertising opportunities. 

These changes started when Spotify integrated its player into Facebook so that songs listened to could be broadcast on the activity feed so that people could discover songs and gain awareness about the Spotify features.

Since then, Facebook rolled out the Open Graph system so that more brands could integrate on the activity wall so that friends will know when you read a Washington Post article or use a Nike running application and even look up a recipe on AllRecipes.

Now word is coming out that there is a small pilot program running with a few advertisers to allow advertisers to sponsor those "read," "listen" and "watch" actions, according to an article in TechCrunch.

Facebook is looking to improve the "action-related" activity in the news feed. This would differ from the Twitter promoted tweets that many are familiar with since the items that would be featured would be something that a person in your circle had done or written. 

Currently, actions broadcasted by your friends that revolves around a brand show up in your feed, but chronologically --  which means is can easily get lost if your feed sees a lot of activity.

Facebook has been rapidly rolling out new features and advertising opportunities for brands on Facebook since f8, in an effort to get it revenue and monetizing options up as it filed for IPO.

Over the last few weeks companies such as Ticketmaster, ScoreBig, AirBnB and Pintrest have jumped on board to get into the action-focused stories system where consumers to consumer takes the lead over business-created content -- dubbed frictionless sharing.

I spoke with Laura Goldberg, the vice president of products for ScoreBig about the recent Open Graph changes and she explained to me what a big change this will bring to her company and others in the ticketing business.

"This new Open Graph function is a very exciting opportunity," Goldberg told me. "It really brings social commerce and social events right onto a social platform, which adds to the experience."

Facebook users that connect with ScoreBig on the network will be able to share that they put in a bid for an upcoming show and this can help their friends discover the great prices and events that they can attend on their own or with friends. Goldberg also explained to me that this system can also help groups of friends go to the same events and request seating together and get referral points by bringing more people into the ticketing system.

Since one of the elements that is being added to the Open Graph application is that rather than the limiting "like" button being the only default verb Facebook users can connect to items, brands and events, new verbs such as cook, run, save, buy and watch will become part of the Facebook lexicon.

ScoreBig has chosen "save" and "made an offer" as the verbs that fit into their services best

Open Graph gives apps even more freedom to post what you are doing (once you have approved the app) and will no longer have to ask for permission to post content to Facebook over and over again. 

But updates through the new Open Graph appear in the ticker automatically -- not appear in the News Feed unless it’s an important event -- so it is more for friends to discover similar articles and music rather than consider it the same as sharing an event or photo albums.

We will have to see, if in the coming weeks and months, this Open Graph activity starts to promote certain activity to the top of your feed, regardless of when the action occurred. Chances are brands will love it, users will be fairly unaffected by it and Facebook will bank even more advertising dollars to prove to investors that it can, continually create new perks for brands on the site.