KaKoo

Phase one of Facebook’s strategy for world domination: complete. Facebook announced that more than 50,000 websites have integrated Facebook’s new social plugins in just one week. The plugins are a core component of the company’s new Open Graph initiative.

Last week, Facebook unveiled the Open Graph API and social plugins during its F8 conference in San Francisco. The complex protocol and API create a more personalized web browsing experience, all through Facebook. Social plugins in particular allow users to interact with other websites (for example, “Liking” them) without even logging in. This has been a point of contention and confusion and has even provoked government scrutiny.

None of those issues have stopped the rapid growth of Facebook’s Open Graph, however. Last Wednesday, Facebook launched with 75 partners. Now there are more than 50,000 websites on board — that’s nearly 300 websites adding Facebook social plugins per hour. Clearly Facebook’s 425+ million users have enticed website owners to jump on the Open Graph bandwagon.

Social plugins are just the first step in Facebook’s ambitious plan to become the central nexus of the web. With this kind of adoption success, it’s tough to imagine a scenario where Facebook doesn’t take over the web.

Facebook once again finds itself at the center of a privacy debate, this time in the wake of the launch of the Open Graph API and so-called “instant personalization” features that leverage your profile information on third-party sites like Yelp and Pandora.

On Sunday, Senator Charles Schumer of New York penned a letter to the FTC, urging them to create privacy guidelines for Facebook and other social networking sites. The heart of the issue, in Schumer’s eyes, is that Facebook’s new features put the onus on users to opt-out, as opposed to asking them if they want to opt-in.

However, Facebook doesn’t see it this way, telling a local ABC News affiliate that “none of these changes removed or reduced people’s control over their information.” That’s true, though as we wrote in our initial review of the privacy implications of the Open Graph API, information is at times more viewable and available in more places than it was before.

Ultimately, users will start to see the implications of their Facebook settings as they browse the Web and decide what is and isn’t for them (see: how to disable Facebook’s instant personalization should you want to opt-out). In the past, we’ve seen Facebook make changes – or back down completely (like with Beacon) – when users agree en masse that the social network has pushed the privacy envelope too far.

This time around though, it seems unlikely we’ll see major changes made. Facebook has already created opt-out features, is requiring its partners to make it easy to opt-out as well and has asserted its position a number of times since its roll out. The Open Graph API is also clearly a major part of the company’s ambitions to dominate the Web.

The FTC’s involvement in regulating social network privacy could certainly throw a wrench in those plans -– instant personalization, after all, will only work really well if lots of your friends participate. Should the FTC get involved or has Facebook done enough to make its new features privacy-friendly? Let us know what you think in the comments.