Whether you’re a casual social media user, a seasoned early adopter or staunchly viewing the scene from the sidelines, you may have heard about the changes Facebook announced last week during its f8 developer conference.

Fairly recently, Facebook changed how users connect with businesses, organizations and public figures through fan pages – now, we’re no longer “fans” of something, but we instead “like” it.

This set the groundwork for Facebook’s new Open Graph, which should be useful to businesses and organizations that want to provide a more personalized Web experience to users.

Here’s how social media blog Mashable put it:

On Facebook, users are connected to people they know, as well as public figures, services and products they like; Facebook’s new platform will allow websites and apps to share this information with each other.

For example, the Internet Movie Database already has “Like” buttons set up for every movie on the site. Soon enough, most other websites will have similar plugins installed. Now, when you “like” something on CNN.com or IMDB.com or any other website with the plugin, it will be shared with your Facebook friends.

Every time you “like” something on the Web, Facebook will know about it, and learn more about you in the process.

Although having a more personalized Web experience sounds like a good idea, Facebook is in the business of sharing your personal information with any other sites it wants, which isn’t so great in my book. Essentially, by slowly integrating its “Like” button into every aspect of the Web, Facebook is ensuring it’s here to stay.

But what does this mean for associations? Well, it will be easier than ever for members to share content on their profiles, so it may be prudent to add the plugin to your content pages. If members want to share information about the organization on their Facebook profiles, let them go for it.

Facebook is slowly integrating itself into every corner of the Web, so ignoring it doesn’t seem like an option anymore.

If you’re wary about Facebook sharing your information with other sites, find out how to disable its Instant Personalization features here.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned after using Facebook for more than five years, it’s to always keep my privacy settings in check. Facebook doesn’t shy away from sharing its users’ information, so you should always double-check what you share there and how that information is being used.

What do you think about Facebook’s latest changes? Will it change how your organization uses (or doesn’t use) Facebook?

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