The Facebook APIs, part 2: Social plugins and the power of the Like button

In my last post I introduced the the Facebook platform and APIs as part of my ongoing series on mobile, social, and local APIs.  We discussed the history of Facebook’s third party API efforts and their newfound focus on the One True Web Path.

This time, we’re going to dive into one of the technical details of the Facebook platform, namely their social plugins.  While these aren’t strictly speaking APIs, they are nonetheless useful tools for enabling your visitors and customers to better integrate your content into their lives and interests.

These plugins compliment the open graph and programmatic APIs we’ll discuss in later posts of this series.  Implemented correctly, with minimal intrusiveness for your site’s users, social plugins can round out your site’s presence in the social space (or at least the Facebook-centered portion of that space).

Click here to read the rest of the PayPal X Developer Network post including example code for embedding social plugins in your site. Also links to a bit.ly bundle of all the resources discussed in the post.