The Facebook APIs, part 3: Plug content into Facebook via Open Graph

This post is the third installment in my ongoing series on Facebook’s mobile, social, and local APIs.  You can read the first and second installments here:  Part 1 introduced the Facebook Platform and part 2 focused on Facebook’s social plugins.

This time we’re discussing the Open Graph protocol.  Open Graph enables you to use HTML meta elements and the Facebook Like button to integrate your pages into the social graph.  Facebook describes the user experience thusly:

Including Open Graph tags on your Web page, makes your page equivalent to a Facebook Page. This means when a user clicks a Like button on your page, a connection is made between your page and the user. Your page will appear in the “Likes and Interests” section of the user’s profile, and you have the ability to publish updates to the user. Your page will show up in same places that Facebook pages show up around the site (e.g. search), and you can target ads to people who like your content.

Click here to read the complete PayPal X Developer Network post on how to plug your content in Facebook via Open Graph.