Graeme Wood

Today Facebook made a significant announcement: publishers can now publish content to the feeds of all people who liked a specific page. This is a significant step forward in the opening of Facebook Page functionality to the entire web. Also as part of the announcement, Facebook announced a minor, yet significant, upgrade that will convert all iFrame like buttons into share buttons as well.

This is the second step of Facebook providing all pages on the internet with the same tools that all Facebook Pages have. For example, let’s say you “like” this article. I will be able to send a news feed story to all Facebook users who liked that page. The impact of this is significant. Imagine the ability for any object that you like to be able to communicate with you directly through the news feed. In other words, all webpages on the internet immediately have become two-way communication channels.

Additionally, publishers will be able to track how that information was spread through Facebook via the addition of upgraded analytics features. As described in Facebook’s documentation, publishers can add the “ref” attribute to any like button and they will be passed back information about where new visitors came from on Facebook (’home’, ‘profile’, ’search’, or ‘other’). For example, I could add the ref attribute, and then view my Page Insights to find out what percentage of incoming visitors found the page through Facebook Search.

While this is nowhere near the final phase of Facebook’s continued opening of Pages to the web, this is a major step that will help empower publishers even more. We’ll be posting more details in the near future about the best practices surrounding the implementation of like buttons on your website. For more information, view today’s blog post from Facebook.

yep, this is big - somewhere behind the '500m' headlines the real power of Facebook is starting to take shape....

don't really believe this....

Me: While I don't particularly believe the methodology behind the ROI figures in this formula, the formula itself is a smart comparison with bought media (for which, let's face it, the ROI methodologies are also pretty shaky when you get to a micro level)

The paywall won't be built in a day

Photograph: Corbis

Still under construction: even accurate early figures on the Times paywall may not tell you much about its eventual fate. Illustration: Corbis

Peter Robins

guardian.co.uk Blogposts Thu 22 Jul 2010 07:34 BST

Rupert Murdoch's new fan club should not lose heart yet. Charging for content at the Times and the Sunday Times is a long-term project – at least, it ought to be

An awful lot of British journalists were hoping that the Times and Sunday Times's paywalls would be an overnight success. At this point, we can probably assume that they aren't. News International's executives have every incentive to boast – more papers going behind paywalls would help the Times, and these things take so long to do well that NI would be likely to maintain its head start. So far, they are not boasting. They are leaving the field to Michael Wolff, Hitwise and Dan Sabbagh's secret squirrels, whose figures get less encouraging the more you look at them.

But all the folk unwontedly cheering on Rupert Murdoch should not lose heart yet. It would be very unwise to declare the experiment an overnight failure.

The Wall Street Journal acquired its million online subscribers by following a consistent strategy for a decade. The idea that WSJ content costs money is so well established that it can withstand the facts that they also have 20 million non-paying users a month and that non-technical guides to getting their stuff free are published on popular blogs. The type of paywall that John Gapper calls a "Berliner" – one that, like the Times's, seals out everyone including search engines from everything except the front-page headlines – makes most sense as a way of establishing similar brand value. But that will take the Times, well, time.

The advertising, too, will have to be sold on a completely different basis – offering access to a small pool of affluent people about whom News International knows a great deal rather than a vast amorphous crowd. It's possible: paidContent's figures on the FT's online advertising revenue are illustrative. But it's not a short-term project.

Here's one possible sign of how fundamental the shift is. There is some indication that Times Online engaged in search-engine marketing – that is, buying keyword ads on search engines – around this June's budget. Why feed the parasites, especially when the new site started up in May? It could be, if the apparent SEM is not a misunderstanding, that they wanted to give affluent, serious-minded readers one last chance to discover how wonderful their content was, while affluent, serious-minded readers could still come to them for free. But my guess is that they needed a burst of pageviews to clear out ad inventory sold under the old dispensation. Everything is starting again.

There might be the outlines of an answer in six months, or a year – assuming Murdoch can stick to one digital strategy this time. Given the symbolic weight attached to this decision, and the Times's long-term status as a money-losing trophy asset, don't expect an early surrender.

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Me: refreshingly balanced view from the Guardian after some pretty snarkey reporting. To be fair you can see their point; after all, one reason that no-one values news any more is that Mudoch started giving it away to boost circulations back in the 90s.....

Partly cool because it is smart and funny, partly becuase has been planned in advance to be in Monday's paper after a weekend game - someone confidently planning what to do if Germany thrashed the favourites!