Facebook — Open GraphThe Open Graph protocol enables any web page to become a rich object in a social graph. For instance, this is used on Facebook to enable any web page to have the same functionality as a Facebook Page. While many different technologies and schemas exist and could be combined together, there ... — Semantic Search

Alex Wilhelm from The Next Web writes:

There is data outside of Facebook that the company wants to be brought in and made relevant inside of the Facebook platform. Enter the Open Graph protocolThe Open Graph protocol enables any web page to become a rich object in a social graph. For instance, this is used on Facebook to enable any web page to have the same functionality as a Facebook Page. While many different technologies and schemas exist and could be combined together, there ..., Facebook’s way to say, in the common tongue ”all your graph are belong to Zuck.”

The product combines graphs, be they music graphs from Pandora or what have you, into the Facebook wider social graph. You can think of it has a “knit-up” with Facebook for other websites that are not Facebook affiliated.

Nick O’Neill from AllFacebook:

If HTML is the way developers get information into GoogleGoogle Inc. is a multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program. The company was ...’s search engine, meta data is the way developers will get data into Facebook’s semantic search engine which will be based on the company’s “Open Graph”. Through the use of easy to implement plugins, Facebook is rapidly collecting structured data on every user. Facebook has also upgraded their APIAn application programming interface (API) is an interface implemented by a software program to enable interaction with other software, similar to the way a user interface facilitates interaction between humans and computers. APIs are implemented by applications, libraries and operating systems ... to make building on top of the Open Graph a much easier process. What’s pretty clear is that it’s an attempt to tackle the residing search giant.

[...] As Mark Zuckerberg said on stage an hour ago, by the end of the day Facebook should have more than 1 billion likes and that data will grow exponentially.

[...] There are a number of standards that have been created in the past as some developers have pointed out, microformatsCentral resource of the microformats community (http://microformats.org). being the most widely accepted version, however the reduction of friction for implementation means that Facebook has a better shot at more quickly collecting the data. The race is on for building the semantic web and now that developers and website owners have the tools to implement this immediately.