When Facebook announced its Open Graph protocol during its F8 gala last week, most traditional news content was not welcome to the party, but that quietly changed a few days ago.

To be part of the "open" graph, a social object must have a title, image, URL, site name and type. But only a handful of Facebook-chosen types are supported. Preceding a list of supported types, Facebook notes that "if your URL is a piece of content - such as a news article, photo, video, or similar - you should not include the og:type property." They explain their logic in a best practice listed lower on that page:

But the protocol is clearly a living document."Note that the Open Graph protocol is currently designed to support real-life objects." It looks like that design might have changed a few days ago.

On April 26, in a mailing list for the Open Graph developers, Facebook Senior Open Programs Manager David Recordon announced that he added the "article" type to opengraphprotocol.org, which is where Open Graph's definitions are stored.

Start tagging

So what should news organizations do? Assuming that they are already working on adding Open Graph elements to their pages, they should code articles so that services like Facebook can properly identify them as articles.

Facebook impact

How will this impact how articles appear on Facebook? Well, that's still unclear. You see, Facebook is under no obligation to change the way it displays information when elements are added to the Open Graph protocol (an open standard), just as they don't have to change anything if a new tag is added to the HTML language.

This is open

How did this development happen just one week after the protocol was announced? Say what you might about the openness of Open Graph, but this particular change was the product of a very open discussion.

On the afternoon that Facebook's Open Graph was announced, MySpace's Monica Keller welcomed people to a Google group established for Open Graph developers.

Two days after the launch, the Associated Press' Jonathan Malek asked if the type "news" or "article" could be added to Open Graph. Facebook's Recordon agreed with Malek's suggestion. He replied that "Facebook will implement support for article" and asked if anyone else would support it.

Malek felt confident that the AP could implement the "article" type and Huffington Post developer Ben Regenspan supported the idea. Twenty-nine minutes after Regenspan's endorsement, Malek sent out a message that the site was updated and "I'll let you know once Facebook supports it as well."

What do you think? Will this change anything about the way you publish, read or share news?

Mashable readers are more likely to share Facebook news through Twitter than Facebook. The 18 most recent Mashable posts tagged "Facebook" as of 11:00 last night, were tweeted on Twitter more than they were shared or liked on Facebook.

I added the tweets, shares, likes and buzzes of each post and came up with these totals. The parenthetical numbers represent the share of total activity (tweets + shares + likes + buzzes) for each.

• Tweets: 20,388 (53%)
• FB Shares: 11,302 (29%)
• FB Likes: 5,751 (15%)
• Buzz: 1,038 (3%)

If you aren't sure how these social activities appear on Mashable.com, here is a snapshot from their list of posts about "Facebook".

A Mashable post that outlined Facebook changes announced by Mark Zuckerberg during today's F8 conference, was shared (linked to) more times on Twiitter than on Facebook. Why is that?

Do tweets spoil it for everyone who can’t be at the game?

One of our reporters is at the Colorado Rockies home opener, tweeting updates under the hashtag #gazrox. After a while, @tj_carlson tweeted: “blog don't tweet about Rox game - many are DVRing”

In this time-shifted world, where TiVo and DVRs let you save the game for later, and Twitter keeps you in touch and in the moment, what’s a news organization to do? Should a newsroom avoid spoilers, or should those who use social media learn how to set up the filters necessary to avoid seeing spoilers?

Let's say you are a war reporter in 1940 and you know that Hitler is sharing important information on his Facebook fan page. This is obviously hypothetical, but apply the same logic to a topic you cover. You can't get that information from any of his fans. Should you become his fan "like" his Facebook page in order to get that information?

The news right now is that Facebook will change the message on its ads and widgets, encouraging people to "like" company pages instead of "become a fan." Mashable rightly points out a concern that people might not understand what they are signing up for, but regardless of the phrasing, is it okay for reporters to make connections on social networks solely for the purpose of obtaining information? Are there certain guidelines that should be followed for this kind of activity?

The frequency of new content is one reason Kia Haslett (@khaslett) visits jezebel.com more than once a day. Is her reply representative of the general population? If it is, it might provide one reason why people visited Facebook more than Google this month.

Every time you visit Facebook or open up your favorite Twitter application, you see new content from a very personalized list of sources: your friends.

Google doesn't greet you with new content. It says hello with a search box.

What about Web sites and blogs? Even frequently-updated sites simply can't compete with the frequency of status updates on social networks.

So how do journalists and news organizations fit into this picture? They need to work hard to be invited into the personalized streams of people interested in the content they produce, find and share.

Context: Reuters' social media guidelines tells reporters not to "scoop the wire" via Twitter. That means "the wire" is not defined by the collective work of its journalists, but by the platforms upon which it is published.

At 12:52 p.m. yesterday, Orange County Register courts reporter Rachanee Srisavasdi (@rachanee333) "scooped" the ocregister.com Web site when she sent this tweet.

Srisavasdi filed a corresponding story that appeared on the Register's site shortly after 1:00 p.m. It identified the courthouse as the Orange County Superior Court building on Civic Center Drive in Santa Ana and told readers that the article would be updated.

Srisavasdi's good work did not "scoop" The Orange County Register by tweeting approximately ten minutes before the story published on its site. The exact opposite is true. The Register broke the news because its reporter was on Twitter.

It might be time for news organizations to reconsider how they define themselves. If they choose to define themselves by their publishing platforms, emerging platforms are likely to be perceived as threats to their business. But if they define themselves by the content they produce, new platforms can easily be identified as new opportunities.

Here are some other takes on Reuters' "Don't scoop the wire" directive.

• Reuters to Journalists: Don’t Break News on Twitter (Mashable)
• Why Social Media Policies Don’t Work (GigaOM)
• Reuters' Top Twitter Rule: 'Don’t Scoop The Wire' (Business Insider)
• Reuters Social Media Policy Gets It Half Right, Half Wrong (Techdirt)
• Reuters Discourages Breaking News on Twitter (Technorati Blogging)

Note: This post was originally emailed to Orange County Register columnist Yvette Cabrera (@Ycabreraocr) who plans on ramping up her Twitter efforts.

Twitter is a great listening tool, and you can find some great people to listen to (follow) by looking at who is linking to your columns on Twitter.

Here are tweets that link to "Human trafficking disguised as temp work."

Click on the names or images on the left to go to each person's Twitter page. Take a look at recent tweets from each person. See if they regularly talk about things related to the topics, issues, communites or places that you write about. If they do, then hit that "follow" button. Here is the Twitter page from Aaron Cohen (@AaronCohen777), one of many people who linked to your story.

It's okay if you run across occasional tweets about personal lives and the latest viral video. Everyone uses Twitter differently. The key is to not follow people who constantly tweet about things that have nothing to do with your job or, if you decide, your personal interests. Follow that advice and you will always find something relevant to your life when you log on to Twitter.

To use BackTweets with your future columns, just go to your column and copy the URL from your browser. Then, visit backtweets.com, paste that URL into the only box on the page and hit the "search" button.

Maybe you're an avid user of Foursquare with more badges and mayorships than you know what to do with. Maybe you prefer services like Gowalla and Brightkite. Or maybe you still think Foursquare is just a game you played in elementary school. Either way, you were welcome at Tuesday night's Social Media Club Orange County meetup. See, social media people exist in real life (irl) too.

Each attendee had a chance to ask about or present on their favorite new social media topic, but several people were there just to listen. Most impressive was the variety of people there: from experienced Web developers to novices learning and staying sharp - the overwhelming message was you don't have to be an expert to attend a social meetup.

Foursquare came up several times, from a "Why on earth would I want to use this?" perspective to how businesses can use Foursquare to promote themselves. For instance, some places offer mayors free food or drinks. Checking in at Co-Working Fullerton, where last night's meeting was held, revealed a green "Special nearby" tab for Cafe West. The offer - a free 16 oz. organic ice tea with purchase of a sandwich or panini when you check in - is a great example of geo-targeted marketing. The offer might just be enough to encourage someone to stop by, and helps differentiate Cafe West from the myriad of other restaurants nearby in downtown Fullerton.

People also wanted to know how use social media more easily - especially those who manage multiple Twitter accounts. The crowd recommended HootSuite and CoTweet as ways to easily manage multiple accounts from a central space.

After the event, a fellow attendee asked me, "Where is the rest of your crew?" We're all busy, and even those of us who want to can't possibly attend every social meetup in our neighborhood. But if you've never gone to one before, stop waiting and get moving! You're bound to learn something, and the people are really friendly. After all, making connections (yes, that means face-to-face as well as online) is what social media is really all about.

Photo courtesy -Meesho- via Flickr.com.