Why WordPress’ Facebook plugin is actually a big deal

One of the key success factors of blogging is the ability to share. Facebook are the masters of sharing. Small wonder then that on 12 June Facebook launched its latest blogging application.

By downloading the Facebook for WordPress plugin bloggers and administrators can now publish content to WordPress directly from Facebook. Nice.

“The plugin was built by Facebook engineers in collaboration with open source partners, and makes it simple for anyone to make their WordPress site more social — no coding required,” Facebook engineer Matt Kelly wrote in a blog post introducing the tool.

The best of the best
With WordPress being is one the biggest players in the blogosphere, powering 16% of the web, partnering with the one of the most dominant players in the online space seems like a pretty good move.

For non-bloggers the partnership may seem pretty trivial or nondescript to say the least, however those for whom blogging is part of everyday life will see the value in the addition of this new plugin.

Sharing made simpler
One of the advantages is that site administrators will now be able to mention specific people, brands or pages with Facebook profiles in the blog post itself, allowing for wider distribution of content by enabling content creators and managers to share posts with personal networks directly off the WordPress platform.

An activity feed widget is another new feature of Facebook’s WordPress integration tool, which allows readers to see what other friends are reading in WordPress-powered sites.

Post and share all in one click
By means of a recommendations plugin the tool then suggests new articles and pages to readers as well as allowing readers to choose what they read on their Timelines, all of which is fully customisable with Like, Subscribe, Send buttons which allows readers to cross-post reactions to your WordPress site and Facebook.

Some still believe the jury to still be out as to whether this is a good or a bad thing. Personally I really like the tool. Sharing is what the internet is all about and this just makes it a whole lot easier.