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Facebook officially unveiled its new Open Graph API and tools a few weeks ago, making it possible for developers and end users to easily hook their own sites into Facebook’s broader ecosystem.

In just the first week, Facebook’s social plugins were integrated into more than 50,000 websites. We expect that number will continue to increase at a rapid rate, especially as businesses and e-commerce sites figure out how to best harness the power of Open Graph.

Although Facebook has ample documentation to help you implement the “Like” buttons onto your own website or blog, it’s still easier on some platforms than it is on others. Posterous and Typepad users, for instance, have “Like” buttons as a built-in option. Today we’re going to look at some of the ways you can implement Facebook’s Like buttons and other social plugins into your hosted WordPress blog or website.

Option One: Edit Your Theme Files

As we will discuss later in the article, there are already dozens of Facebook Like plugins for WordPress available on the web and in the official WordPress.org Plugin Repository. These solutions are certainly the easiest way to add a “Like” button or other social plugins to your site, but they won’t necessarily give you the type of control you can get by just inserting a few lines of code into your theme files.

Why would you want to do this? Depending on your blog or website’s design, you may want buttons or other social information to be displayed in a particular way or in a particular area. While some of the plugins will let you create CSS classes that can then be edited in your theme, for some developers, it might just be easier to add a “Like” button directly to your theme files.

WPBeginner and Devlounge both have good tutorials about how and what code to insert in your theme, but the gist is:

Within your single.php file, in the post loop, add the following line wherever you want the button to appear:

You can adjust the parameters like show_face=true/false and colorscheme=dark/light depending on your preferences. Again, you can see the official Facebook documentation or the two tutorials above for more detailed information.

Option Two: Use a Plugin

This is the option that will be easiest for most users to implement. Right now, there are scads of Facebook “Like” button plugins and other social plugin tools available. It’s great to have options, but it can also make finding the best plugin for your site more difficult.

Here are a few we tried and liked (and to be clear, this is not intended to be an exhaustive or definitive list):

• Like – This plugin supports multiple languages, gives a number of display options and can be shown at the top or bottom of a post, on pages and on the front page, all based on what settings you select.
• Facebook Like Button – This plugin has a nice settings panel that makes it easy to see and adjust how you want buttons to appear.
• Facebook Like Button Plugin – We like that this plugin supports a shortcode, which means that you can indicate what posts to include a button on or not, in the post itself. You can also set default global options.

One plugin that I really like is the Facebook Social Plugins by Olivier Lussier. It has the standard Facebook “Like” button options similar to the other plugins, but it also includes widgets that support other Facebook social plugins.

For instance, you can have a widget that is a “Like” button for any page showing that widget. This is a great option for people who don’t want to have buttons in the bottom or top of their posts but still want people to be able to “Like” an item.

You can also include a “Like Box” for a Facebook Page you have set up. So if you have a Facebook Page associated with your website or company, etc., you can include that box on your website.

Other widgets include an Activity Feed, a Facebook Comments box and a Recommendations listing. These options may need to be customized to fit your individual site or theme, but it makes integrating these social plugins pretty fast and painless.

How are you integrating Facebook into your WordPress blogs? Let us know!

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Tags: facebook, Facebook Like, web development series, Wordpress, wordpress plugins

This week was positively schizophrenic when it comes to social media news: web coverage of major news events, Google search’s makeover, Twitter innovations, Facebook privacy gaffes, Apple-centric controversy and, of course, the Webbys.

If you’re still reeling from yesterday’s market madness and have subsequently forgotten everything you learned over the past seven days, never fear — Mashable has a list of the top 12 social media and tech stories of the week.

1. Google Search Gets a Major Overhaul – After months of testing and speculation, Google is finally releasing the next edition of Google search to the public, complete with a left-hand menu bar and even an update to the well-known Google logo.

2. Facebook Chat Down for Maintenance Following Privacy Lapse – The feature was presumably disabled following a report that exposed a Facebook security bug that allowed users to access and view friends’ live chats, friend requests and friends in common.

3. iPad Coming to Nine More Countries on May 28 – Residents of Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the UK, rejoice: The iPad will be available in your country on May 28.

4. Google Adds App Store for Analytics – Google is giving users even more tools for finding and understanding their website’s visitor stats. The company has just announced they’re opening a full App Gallery for Google Analytics.

5. Twitter to Launch Embeddable Tweets – Screenshots of tweets begone — you can now embed individual tweets on your website. There’s still some bugs, though.

6. Mashable Wins 3 Webby Awards – Mashable is honored to have won three Webby Awards in the categories Best Cultural Blog (Webby Award) and Best Business Blog (Webby Award and People’s Voice). We’re thankful to all the readers who voted for us.

7. Chrome Gains, IE Slumps in Browser Wars – Google Chrome was the fastest growing web browser for the fifth month in a row in analytics company Net Applications’ April market report, while Microsoft Internet Explorer again lost market share.

8. More Fallout at Digg: 10% of Staff Laid Off – Social news site Digg has just laid off 10% of its staff according to a representative from the company. The move comes a month after Jay Adelson’s sudden departure as CEO, in which he was replaced by company founder Kevin Rose.

9. Greece Riots as Seen on Twitter, YouTube – As riots explode in Greece, pictures and videos are flying around the social web, shared from news sources and folks on the ground.

10. Nashville Flooding: Twitter and YouTube Tell the Story – Nashville and other parts of Tennessee were hit by the region’s greatest rainfall in recorded history this weekend, resulting in a severe flood that has devastated the region and even swept away buildings and cars.

11. Apple Has Sold 1 Million iPads – Apple has officially confirmed it has sold 1 million iPads. The company sold its one millionth iPad on Friday, April 30, just 28 days after the device’s release.

12. Apple Isn’t Laughing at Ellen’s iPhone Commercial Parody – After airing a send-up of an iPhone commercial on Monday’s Ellen DeGeneres Show, the comedienne apologized for the parody at the behest of, well, Apple.

Tags: apple, facebook, Google, humor, ipad, iphone, television, trending, twitter, webbys-2010, youtube

Our fearless leader, Pete Cashmore, swung by the Bloomberg studios earlier this week to discuss what’s happening in technology, the debate around open vs. closed web, and Facebook’s new Open Graph initiative and how it could hurt Google.

It’s tough to argue that the last few weeks haven’t been filled with action in the tech world. Facebook’s Open Graph, which helps personalize the web based on your Facebook information, has caused controversy over what it means for privacy. At the same time, Apple is trying its best to kill Adobe Flash, but could face an antitrust investigation. Both have sparked a debate over the state of the open web.

Be sure to watch Pete’s segment on Bloomberg and let us know what you think. Could Facebook be the next Google? Are Apple and Facebook’s actions good or bad for the web? Make yourself heard in the comments!

Tags: Bloomberg, facebook, Google, mashable, pete cashmore

Facebook has extended its “Gross National Happiness” prototype app to 18 new countries. The app analyzes words in status updates like “awesome” or “tragic” to track changes in the collective emotional state of its users.

When Facebook applied the methods to its U.S. userbase last year, it found that happiness went way up on holidays and way down when celebrities like Michael Jackson or Heath Ledger passed away. While the results of the study weren’t surprising, the idea of using status updates to measure national happiness was a novel one.

After Facebook’s latest update, the list now includes the U.S., Canada, India, Great Britain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Puerto Rico, Singapore, Austria, Germany, New Zealand, Italy, Chile, Uruguay, Spain, Mexico, South Africa, Argentina, Australia, Ireland, Venezuela and Colombia. Status updates in the English, Dutch, German, Italian and Spanish languages are included in the data.

As you might have expected, residents of each country become happier on that country’s holidays and during big events — for example, Spain is happier on Saint Jordi’s Day and U.S. residents are happier around the time of the Super Bowl. And speaking of sporting events, those can affect the results too; dips in happiness correspond with major sports defeats. Even bigger dips accompanied natural disasters like earthquakes, of course.

We noticed that in some cases small increases of negativity accompanied big leaps in positivity. Not everyone has a great Christmas thanks to travel stress or family drama, so it’s no surprise that the negative comments go up a little bit at that time of the year too. Play with the app yourself at Facebook’s website to see what insights you can conjure up.

If you find this data interesting, you’ll also appreciate this: Facebook decided a couple of months ago to find out how relationship status affects happiness. Unsurprisingly, it found that folks in relationships tended to post happy updates more frequently. Singles were better off than users who didn’t list their relationship status or were in open relationships, however.

Tags: facebook, gross national happiness, social media, social networking, status updates, study, trending

If you’ve ever wanted to have more real-time interaction for your Facebook Page or Group, or even just for you and your friends, give Clobby a try. This newly launched application will let you conduct massively multiplayer chats right from your Facebook page.

It’s an interesting idea for engaging people around a topic, an event or a piece of content, such as a news article or video. Users can host virtual parties and integrate Clobby for real-time interaction with their fans and friends.

This app has a simple, non-distracting UI that represents a good blend of familiar group chat interfaces and the even more familiar Facebook interface; it merely adds a “Chat” tab to the upper part of a Facebook page. Here’s what a group chat with Clobby looks like:

Adding Clobby is an easy 2-click process. One click authorizes Clobby to access the Facebook page, and a second click adds the “Chat” tab to the profile or page in question. Any administrator of the Facebook page (or if the chat is on a profile, the owner of that profile) can act as a chat admin, as well. Admins can also add other Facebook users as moderators. Offending chat trolls can be warned, kicked out or banned.

WalkieTalkie, a somewhat similar application, allows for voice group chat on Facebook — but especially for larger groups, voice chat could get literally and figuratively noisy.

While we love the idea, we’re not sure about the future of Clobby. If this feature becomes popular and proves monetizable, it’s possible that Facebook would choose to make group chat an official feature of the network’s web and mobile interfaces. And we’re not sure about Clobby’s revenue model. We do know it’s not more than a month or so old, and it’s a product of as-yet unlaunched software shop SixTakes.

We’re also not sure whether chats are public or private. As you’re probably aware, the difference between public and private Facebook data — and whether users know if their data is public or private — is a subject that’s come up a lot lately in discussions about Facebook features, particularly Pages.

We’ll see how Clobby adoption goes; in the meantime, try the app out and let us know what you think about it. Is this something you’d use for your profile page? If you own a small business, would you use this app on your Facebook page?

Tags: clobby, facebook