Facebook rolled out its new game plan at its F8 conference on Wednesday. They are looking to increase their presence on the internet. And after giving their moves a lot of thought I have to wonder if they aren’t playing with a double edge sword.

Facebook made three major announcements that will make it easier to connect third-party Web sites that adopt the firm’s new “open-graph protocol.”

The ramifications of this bold step, like a double-edge sword, can cut deep. Businesses can take advantage of this technology to grow its fan base, but will this mean that we will be inundated with more sales pitches? And the availability of abuse can cut even deeper.

Don’t get me wrong. From a business view this is a shrewd move and any business that jumps on board will see their external sites grow. But at what cost? I believe one of the core principles of Facebook is to protect the privacy of its members.

I have no doubt that CEO/Founder Mark Zuckerberg and Bret Taylor, Director of Product, can make this work. As long as they do not forget what their core values are, I see these plugins as a huge success for all of Facebook users. Unfortunately, too many times companies, for whatever reason, seem to forget what got them where they are and push the envelope so far out that they cannot get back to their original intent.

There is something to be said about traditional brick and mortar businesses. They have a tendency for slower growth, which gives them time to monitor and plot out their direction. With the Internet business model, growth happens at a much quicker rate. Sometimes monitoring this growth can be difficult at its best. How many dot.com businesses that started out with a great idea have fizzled out because they took on too much too quickly?

Here’s another paradigm shift, Link-baiting.  Jim Westergren stats that  link-baiting  “means to create something that naturally attract backlinks for your web page by getting people to talk about it, discussing it on forums, blogging about it, posting it on del.icio.us/Furl/Digg/Shoutwire and linking to it from their sites. It also attracts a lot of visitors.”

A couple of years ago, when someone would see an interesting piece of content, they would link to it. Today, when this happens, people tweet it. So, what does this mean for link bait and how will the new Facebook plugins affect linking?

Bret Taylor showed the crowd of developers gathered at the San Francisco Design Center how he could go to ESPN.com, connect to information about Stanford running back Toby Gerhart. The site can then send updates on Gerhart, such as his NFL draft status Thursday, to all those who clicked “like.” The Like button is a simple one-line plug-in that can be easily added to a site. Facebook also introduced a “social bar” plug-in that can be added to the bottom of any Web page.

Between Facebook and Twitter, are these new trends going to shift how we link to information? Most likely, yes. Are we, as developers, going to be able to stay up with these trends?  This push for new technology is like a steam roller, you either get on board quickly or get rolled over.

I like technology, I like the direction we are headed in. I just hope those that are leading the charge remember that a sword cuts both ways.