When all likes lead to Facebook, and liking requires a Facebook account, and Facebook gets to hoard all of the metadata and likes around the interactions between people and content, it depletes the ecosystem of potential and chaos — those attributes which make the technology industry so interesting and competitive. It’s one thing for semantic and identity layers to emerge on the web, but it’s something else entirely for the all of the interactions on those layers to be piped through a single provider (…)

via FactoryCity » Understanding the Open Graph Protocol.

What it means: additional must-read from Chris Messina to understand the implications of the recent Facebook announcements. Already, an open protocol around “liking” things has emerged at http://openlike.org. The strategist in me admires Facebook’s strategy and current execution. It’s brilliant and Machiavellian. I would have done the same thing. 🙂 You just need to be aware of the potential positive and negative consequences if you implement their technology.