Facebook adding third-party integration

The Wall Street Journal has a scoopy story about Facebook's forthcoming announcement on Thursday. The report says Facebook will be opening itself up for other companies to add their wares in the form of branded pages and services made available to Facebook users on different networks.

Previously, Facebook's strategy for adding this content was in the form of specialty groups, which Facebook members had to join in order to access or gain benefit from. According to the WSJ, these services will now be integrated as standalone portions of the service and will be available without leaving the social network, although details in both execution and parties involved aren't mentioned.

A great deal of the article discusses sharing content, which has been an integrated feature of Facebook since October of last year. WSJ hints that Facebook is enhancing that functionality, although it provides no concrete examples.

We'll be covering the announcement here in San Francisco on Thursday, so stay tuned. For more analysis, check out Caroline's post on the News.com blog.

[Mobile.Dev]

just wish they weren't so darn expensive

one thing I?m wondering is how much this will cost. Facebook is notorious for being super $$ for 3rd party advertisers - minimum of $30K/month for banners and $50K/month 3 month minimum for having a sponsored Facebook group.

If they were smart they?d let even the little people help build useful tools for their users.