Mark Zuckerberg has unveiled Facebook’s bid to put itself at the centre of the web (with “like” buttons becoming universal symbols) as it goes increasingly social and open. The Facebook CEO unveiled a set of partners, including Microsoft and Yelp, designed to help people to build a more personal social web and connect with Facebook just about wherever they are.

Unveiled at the third f8 developers conference in San Francisco last night Zuckerberg said the development built on the open social graph, which maps out the connections between people and the things they care about online to form an interconnecting graph, first announced three years ago.

As well as expanding the open social graph Facebook had a number of key product announcements, the biggest being the much talked about “like” button, which will be seeded on sites across the web (replacing the “fan button”).

Facebook has worked on the development with three partners—Microsoft Docs, Yelp and Pandora—to give users what he said was a glimpse of a future that people can access without having to login again or click to connect.

He said that Facebook has focused mostly on mapping out the part of the graph around people and their relationships while other sites and services have been mapping out other parts of the graph such as Yelp which has mapped out the best local businesses and Pandora maps out which songs are related to each other.

It’s a move that makes perfect sense and should make it easily to organise your life by pulling in all those disparate bits of your life together. The including of Microsoft here is really important both to Facebook and Microsoft.

To the party Microsoft is bringing its recently announced Microsoft Docs (its shot back at Google and Google Docs). Based on Office Web apps Microsoft Docs will allow Facebook users to create and share documents created in Office 2010. Microsoft says that it allows you to connect your “PC to your social networks, your photo sharing services, your phone, and your other PCs – and help you keep things in sync across all the devices you use”.

Zuckerberg said that Facebook will bring together all those different parts of the graph putting Facebook and people at the centre of the graph.

“Today at our third f8, we are making it so all websites can work together to build a more comprehensive map of connections and create better, more social experiences for everyone.

“We have redesigned Facebook Platform to offer a simple set of tools that sites around the web can use to personalize experiences and build out the graph of connections people are making.

“This next version of Facebook Platform puts people at the centre of the web. It lets you shape your experiences online and make them more social,” Zuckerberg said.

He cited the example of Pandora saying that if you like a band on Pandora that information can become part of the graph so that later if you visit a gig site it will be able to tell you when the band you like is coming to your area.

It’s a cool feature and really I’d like more of the same. For restaurants and other cultural stuff as well as some reminder when cool bits of TV are popping up as really who gets time to programme Sky+?

Zuckerberg said the power of the open graph is that it helps to create a smarter, personalised web that gets better with every action taken.

“For example, now if you’re logged into Facebook and go to Pandora for the first time, it can immediately start playing songs from bands you’ve liked across the web. And as you’re playing music, it can show you friends who also like the same songs as you, and then you can click to see other music they like.”

As for the product announcements as I said the biggest of these is the  “like” button that can be shared with partner sites. It looks like you will see this a lot in quite simple, but powerful implementations. For instance on one partner site CNN a users could instantly “like” a photo or news story. It extends Facebook as did Facebook Connect seeding it out in the wider universe.

One of the first brands that Facebook is working with is Levi’s, which will integrate the new social plugins. It will add the “Like” function on its e-commerce site. In addition it will build a “Friend Store” in which consumers who are logged into Facebook can see a list of their friends’ favorite Levi’s products and seamlessly shop with their friends.

Jodi Bricker, vice president of digital for Levi’s Americas, said: “We’re creating a new social shopping experience that will change the way people shop online and, frankly, make buying jeans more fun. We’re excited to pioneer this new technology and help our loyal fans connect with our brand and share their favorite Levi’s products with friends.”

We’re not only going to see this on US, but on UK ones too. At launch Facebook partners this side of the Atlantic include Love Film, Sky, ESPNcricinfo.com and MyDeco.

Facebook Director of Platform Product Bret Taylor, said: “Once you put these ‘like’ buttons all around your site, the like buttons power a whole suite of social plugins.”

Another plugin shows the activity of a Facebook user’s friend on that third-party site and a “recommendations” plugin will offers suggested content friends.

“It’s not just 10 most e-mailed articles, this is truly powerful recommendations,” Taylor said.

Another option is a “Facebook social bar” that brings all of these elements together with Facebook chat and friends list.

The second product announcement related to the open social graph and is a set of metatags, which sites can use to mark up pages to tell Facebook what type of information given sites represent.

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