by Adriana Hamacher

OP-ED: Facebook's bid to socialise the web, with a new set of social plugins, is likely to have a substantial impact on the way tickets are marketed and sold on the web.

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder, introduced the new tools, which are part of the company’s Open Graph strategy, at today's annual F8 developer conference in San Francisco. Writing on the Facebook blog, he says:

“This next version of Facebook Platform puts people at the centre of the web. It lets you shape your experiences online and make them more social. For example, if you like a band on Pandora, that information can become part of the graph so that later if you visit a concert site, the site can tell you when the band you like is coming to your area. The power of the open graph is that it helps to create a smarter, personalized web that gets better with every action taken. We think that the future of the web will be filled with personalized experiences.”

The plugins will dramatically expand Facebook’s presence across the web, allowing its service to be more deeply embedded into third party websites.

A Facebook user has to be logged into their account (on the third party’s website) in order to use the service. Facebook users will then be able to click a ‘Like’ button on stories, photos, music or videos they want to share with friends, via the site. The information that a user ‘Likes’ on a site like LoveFilm, will then be kept by Facebook and can then be released back to the third party’s website, for them to use and tailor a more personalised online experience.. Facebook estimates that it will serve one billion ‘Likes’ buttons by the end of its first day.

The new strategy is being seen as a power play by the social network, which has over 400 million active users, to steal some ground back from Google and Twitter, its major rivals. The new plug-ins represent a significant commercial opportunity as they can drive large amounts of traffic to the third party partner sites.

Statistics show that more and more people are using social networking to decide which events to attend. Recent research by the Society of London Theatre (Solt) into the effect of internet and social media on theatregoing, found that Facebook, Twitter and blogs are increasingly the means by which ticket sales are driven, rather than reviews or traditional forms of advertising.

Sixty-five per cent of the people surveyed said it was social media that helped them decide whether to go to the theatre, and which show to choose. And they're more likely than ever to book online.

At the State of the Arts conference, earlier this year, Marcus Romer of Pilot Theatre pointed out that while radio took 38 years from its inception to reach 50 million users, and TV took 13 years, Facebook achieved the same coverage in just two.