Facebook and Open Graph Protocol

Question

Why is the Facebook open graph protocol beneficial beneficial to my web site?

Why do I need to implement some of the meta properties to use the Facebook "Like" button on my web page?

I do NOT understand what the meta tags are for, I don't understand their necessity for the "Like" button, and also am completely lost as to why the generated code from Facebook for the button doesn't even appear on my webpage. The HTML5 markup is not visible, I am not familiar with XFBML, the iframe at least appears on the page, but displays an image similar to that of a frozen or unresponsive webpage (that snowman guy who is gnashing his teeth and has snowflakes over his head), and finally the URL does not work either.

Answer 1

The Open Graph protocol is used by Facebook to understand information about a webpage. As for why you need to implement the OG meta tags it's because that is what Facebook looks at on your page in order to display details about a web page a user likes on Facebook.

You can read more details about the Open Graph protocol here http://www.beabigrockstar.com/blog/introduction-to-the-open-graph-protocol.

As for info on how Facebook uses the Open Graph og.likes tag read this page on the Facebook Developer site. https://developers.facebook.com/docs/opengraph/guides/og.likes

As for why the Like button isn't showing up correctly on your page you'll have to provide some more details (code from your page so we can find any issues) or if the page is live a link to it.

Hope this helps.