Facebook Connect is connecting people across the social graph to fresh content and furthermore it’s channeling outside Web events into individual lifestreams. Essentially, Facebook is solidifying its position as not only your primary social network, it’s also a emerging as a central hub for your attention, updates, news, promotion, and enlightenment.

Now, Facebook is extending its network to the World Wide Web, allowing brands and personalities who have or will host Fan Pages to embed a widget version of the page directly into Web sites, other social networks, social networks, and blogs. This builds a bridge between the 200 million strong Facebook network and outside visitors to strategically concentrate on promotion and community building.

For example, here’s a sample widget for the Facebook Fan Page for my new book with Deirdre Breakenridge, “Putting the Public Back in Public Relations.”

Interactivity is key and by embedding the Facebook widget, site owners can augment, eliminate or reduce reliance on custom brand-building and attention grabbing site development while still amassing a significant following or fandom.  It also extends the updates and content live, providing site visitors with the latest activity from inside the network to wherever the widget is placed.  It’s a simple matter of adding a bit of automatically generated code to the site, not unlike how we embed YouTube videos or Flickr pictures today.

Visitors to outside branded pages can securely login with their Facebook credentials to interact with the widget to comment, become a fan, and view the latest pictures, videos, posts, etc. As fans participate, their activity is simultaneously shared within the Facebook community, further promoting the branded content within the personal “News Feed” for Facebook friends and contacts to potentially view and click through.

Here are a few examples of the Widget in action:

Lance Armstrong

BlackBerry

World Wildlife Fund

NPR

Kings of Leon

Lenny Kravitz

Roger Federer

Newsweek

ABC News

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