As of last week, WordPress publishers can cross-post blog content to their Facebook Timeline and Facebook Pages through a new plugin.
WordPress currently dominates the blogosphere and powers 16.6% of the Web, attracting over 600 million unique visitors each month.
Facebook developer Matt Kelly explains the plugin has been built by Facebook engineers in collaboration with open source partners. According to Kelly, the new functionality makes it easy for anyone to make their WordPress site more social, “no coding required”.
“Once the plugin is installed, you can cross-post content published to WordPress to your Facebook Timeline and the Facebook Pages you manage. You can also mention the names of Pages and friends as you post to further distribute your content,” says Kelly.
Forbes notes that with this move, Facebook is essentially weaving its platform more deeply “into the fabric of the blogging universe”. This places the social network in a better position to compete with Google and its Blogger platform. The plugin could also drive user engagement on Facebook, which would in turn attract more advertisers.
Apart from the new plugin, Facebook has a number of widgets available for WordPress, such as Activity Feed, Facebook Comments and Recommendations.
The integration of WordPress into Facebook's Open Graph marks another step by the social network to create a broad ecosystem within its own platform. The social network recently launched its own App Centre and has allowed the introduction of paid-for apps.
At its current growth rate, Facebook is expected to hit the billion user mark before year-end.
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