If You Like Links, You’ll Hate What Facebook Is Doing To Them - The Future Buzz
Case in point, this weekend I tried to share a link to a story in The Guardian I found interesting. You’ll note (as I highlighted in a red box) even my browser recognized this was a link to the publication’s website, not Facebook.
However, due to how The Guardian has configured their site’s Facebook integration, anyone clicking the link is not taken to the expected URL. Instead a user is taken to this page to authorize use of The Guardian application.
Facebook is hijacking links to external websites of publications that have built social news apps on Facebook, and redirecting users to said internal Facebook apps. Ridiculous.
No.
Facebook is not hijacking anything. The Guardian has integrated their site into the “Open Graph API”. Their site recognises you as a Facebook user, and because of how they’ve configured the integration (poorly, IMHO), you are automatically redirected to Facebook so you can give permission to The Guardian’s website to post to your Facebook wall. You are then redirected back to The Guardian’s website, not an internal Facebook app.
Facebook is not “hijacking links”. Publishers are asking Facebook users if they can post the fact the user read their article to the users’ wall. To do this they need to redirect to Facebook the first time the user reads on their site.
