Facebook f8 08 - Live Blog Live Blogging

Facebook f8 08

(07/23/2008)

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Live now!

Wednesday July 23, 2008 1:39

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Sorry for delay, had connection issues

Wednesday July 23, 2008 1:39

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Zuckerberg is on right now, talking about the opportunties, mistakes made so far with platform

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Facebook's mission: Make the world more connected. Give people the power to share.

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We help people recognize the good that others do. The world is become more transparent. We have to work together to solve the world's problems. And it's more than any single organziation can do.

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Looking back...

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The last year's been "pretty crazy." It's shown that a lot of ppl are joining "the movement."

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Results:
Last year: 24M users. This year: 90M. A lot of them "here to use the apps you have built."

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Global use has gone fro 50% a year ago to over 2/3.

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Over 40% of people in canada are on FB.

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FB is open to user translation. Spanish took <2 weeks. French < 24 hours.

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Devs have been asking for way to make apps available globally. ANNOUNCEMENT: Translation tool now available to all app developers.

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There are over 400,000 developers building things on the platform

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50%+ devs are outside US

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There are 4 "developer garages" on simultaneously right now

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How apps help people share info:
iLike vs Myspace: iLike on FB has more usage with music than MySpace does.

"Causes" app on Facebook has more Al Gore followers than Gore's own app

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... but the two have merged

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Zynga has more daily players every day (by factor of 4) than there are Las Vegas hotel rooms.

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New apps that are getting funding for the platform:
Zynga, Flixter (we've covered)

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There has been more than $200M invested in the ecosystem, but it's "a multibillion dollare ecosystem."

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It's all based on the social graph. And one of the most powerful way to exploit is Feeds.

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Virtuous circle of sharing: Feeds surface recent content, which drives consumption, which drives more creation of content.

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Day after news feed launched, traffic went up 50%. Then the virtuous cycle kicked in, and the amount of content people created went up the same amount

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Lessons learned:

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We learned we need to work more closely with developers. We don't want an ecosystem of apps that are just spreading virally and not furthering the movement.

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We've learned we need to align incentives better. We haven't done enough to reward good citizens, and punish abusive apps.

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Need to built a more simple and elegant solution for apps that don't require installs

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Next evolution of FB: Goals.

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1. Give people more power tools to share
2. Reward apps that help ppl share
3. Simplify the site.

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Demo of new UI...

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The amoutn of info that's put into the feed is proportional to the amount of sharing.

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Types of feed items.
1. Full story... a new type of feed story with templates.
2. Standard story...
3. Short, one-line story... they now aggergate multiple items into one line

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New "Publisher" feature on profile page... easier way to "drop information" on your feed, or on friends' walls.

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New tabs... richer UI

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We've removed a lot of friction in getting to the good apps.

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"Those annoying boxes you got when adding apps... those are gone." [applause]

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But, for people who want to keep boxes on their page, "We've added a boxes tab."

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Now, for some reason, we are going to wathc the "Bill oReilly Flips Out" clip

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Ok, that was the lead up to a weird joke, which didn't quite play

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"We'll do it live."

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Demo now...

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We've gotten rid of the concept of adding apps, but the way we've evolved the feeds, your friends can still get notifications from apps that you have, even if they don't have the app themselves.

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The feed you see is based on a filter from everything happening in your network. It's some weird AI I think.

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But they're playing around with a new "All Stories" feed that is completely filtered of what everyone is doing. The Facebook Firehose, as it were.

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Expanding across the Web
"More of the world is outside of facebook than inside facebook"

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Marks believe the big social networks are going to decentralize into just collections of social apps.

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These apps are all just going to work together.

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It's like how the personal computing industry developed. At first, companies built top-to-botton systems. Then it fragmented... hardware / OS / apps, etc.

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"At FB, we want to push this forward."
We fully expect that over the next few years, the majority of the way people share are to come from other apps.

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"Our missions is to give people the power to share."

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"Every app that's built is a new an unique way for people to share information they haven't before."

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Facebook Connect...

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It's "our version of Platform, for the rest of the Web."

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Goals.
1. Build the same kinds of apps across the web.
2. Share info across the web.
3. Control your info across the web

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Demo.
Easy to add to any site, just a line of HTML. Users login quickly and "then they're connected."

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[This is like mega open ID, but it's not ... it's Facebook ID]

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privacy settings from FB go to the new site, too. What people see depends on their type of connection with you on FB

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[Comment From firefly X2firefly X2: ]

was the new FB redesign for this purpose?

Wednesday July 23, 2008 2:14 firefly X2

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Partly, I believe

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People are also going to be able to initiatie connections from external sites.

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Can also post to FB feeds from external sites.

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"People have complete control" over info that goes into feed.

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[Comment From Anders, DenmarkAnders, Denmark: ]

When was the new design first launched?

Wednesday July 23, 2008 2:15 Anders, Denmark

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see www.news.facebook.com

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Sorry, www.new.facebook.com

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Connect product demos now.

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First, Digg...

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Joe Stump: Our mission at digg is to enable people to easily and quickly find and share info from around the web.

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Now, all the 90M FB users are going to be able to join the Digg Army with a click of the button.

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[Comment From ARAR: ]

When do these changes go live?

Wednesday July 23, 2008 2:17 AR

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Some are already

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Say you're on digg and you want to publish to FB. Can now do with one click. No longer need to register, signon, or authenticate. "Facebook connect handles all of that."

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Once you're connected, when you digg stories, all your digging activity is instantly and seamlessly put on your feed

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"Thanks everybody, Digg on."

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Next up: David Recordan, Six Apart.

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Commenting on blogs has not evolved as fast as blog authoring.
We've created a plugin for Movable Type that lets you authenticate to comment via FB.

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Takes advantage of Dynamic Privacy... your privacy and security settings on FB are automatically reflected on MT

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Now when you're in a conversation on a blog, your FB friends get highlighted. [this is cool]

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Plus all your comment activity is reflect on FB feeds.

It tooks us a day and a half to implement.

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Next up: Mike Phlips, City Search

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New site with "importnat consumer improvements" is coming

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Pitch: "When you look for a hotel, restaurnt of spa, the most important thing is trusted content."

"What could be more helpful or trusted than reviews ore recommendations from your friends and network."

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CitySearch is getting personal pages, and let you port your FB profile data to your CitySearch account

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New, My Friends Reviews tab.

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When you review a business, it will go on to the CitySearch site as well as the FB News feed.

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When does all this launch?

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Profile launched Monday.

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Facebook Connect
Developer keys avail today, beta period shortly

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Next year, I hope that when we all come together, we can point to not just a large quanty of apps that have been built, but meaninful apps built both inside and outside of Facebook.

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[Zuck is now asking the FB develoers in the room to stand... big applause.]

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That's it for Zuck.

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Standyby....

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PR Video playing now

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2:30	Did you view the Facebook live video feed of the Zuck keynote? Yes ( 36% ) No ( 64% ) Wednesday July 23, 2008 2:30

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Now up: Benjamin Ling, Director Platform Program Management

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There's a rich ecosystem... financial as well. 200M invested in the apps. Just this week, 34M invested in LivingSocial and Zynga

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Plus there's an advertising network paying out "10s of millons of dollars" to developers.

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Then there are the big brands, and non profits.

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And finally, it's an academic success... lots of courses taught about FB and social networking.

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[Comment From LPLP: ]

Can you post this after you done? I'm trying to catch up reading and the scroll keeps plunging to the bottom of the transcript. It makes it difficult to read.

Wednesday July 23, 2008 2:32 LP

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yes, it will be archived.

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Guiding Principles for Great Applications

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Basics:
Meaningful
Trustworthy
Well-designed

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Meaningful: means: Social, Useful, Expressive, Engaging.
[So explain Vampires...?]

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Example: Lil Green Patch. As you help your friends, sponsors contribute money to help the rainforest.

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Useful. Example = Car Pool app. 20% of Cornell's students use it!

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Expressive: Example = Graffiti.

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Engaging. Example = Who has the Biggest Brain

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About 1M users each day spend 30 min each of Playfish's apps

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2:37	What do you think of the new Facebook design? Like it ( 43% ) Don't care either way ( 14% ) Don't like ( 19% ) Haven't seen or tried it ( 24% ) Wednesday July 23, 2008 2:37

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Trustworthy apps: Need to be secure, and RESPECTFUL of users. Eg no spamming! [Thank you!]

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Be transparent: Users should get what you say they would. Not interstial adds or something.

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Buidling Well-designed apps:
Clean design. Do usability testing!
Fast. No "application loading" crap. Speed = users, data shows it.

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Lastly: Be robust. App available "when and where" users want. Build for scalability

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At Facebook, "we're listening."

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[Comment From RR: ]

Thanks for doing this!! I'm at work now so can't exactly watch the live feed. This is immensely helpful!

Wednesday July 23, 2008 2:41 R

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You bet.

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1. We partnering more closely with developers

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We are hoping to do much better in the online developer forums.

And organizationally, we're incorporate feedback from devs into our builds.

And we're staffing upa community development team

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2. We're working on keeping the ecosystem safe for users, and fair for devs

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3. We will be helping devs create more, better apps....
Will be "aligning incentives."

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Speaking of which, here are several programs to help devs...

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[Comment From Nancy RamamurthiNancy Ramamurthi: ]

Sorry - logging in late, but any insight on FB payments would be interesting.

Wednesday July 23, 2008 2:44 Nancy Ramamurthi

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Nothing yet on payments

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New developer site...
With events calendar, news, blog

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More support from FB devs around the world, via wikis etc.

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Plus, the Facebook Fund. A $10M fund, also provides mentorship.

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Recipients of the grants include Connected Weddings.

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[I got a preview... very cool. Auto-arranges seating charts based on your social graf!]

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New competition today: $2M challenge fund. there will be 25 finalists, each get $25k. Winners will get 250k plus mentorshop from FB. "We encourage you to apply."

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New programs for existing apps:
1. Facebook Verication program
2. Facebook Great Apps program

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Verification: FB will use automatic and manual ways to put a stamp of trustworthiness on apps.

Users will trust these apps more.

Devs will get more visibility to users, and hence more users.

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Great Apps program:
For apps that embody all ten of the FB guiding principles,. Plus "give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected."

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Great Apps program in alpha stage, but there are two producs in it already:
iLike and Causes.

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iLIke wins becuase it supports free on-demand streaming of music. Causes because it's, you know, saving the world.

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There will be an enforcement system. "We never expected we've had to disable apps." But we have. Over 1000 apps.

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Going forward, we want to be more clear about what will cuase us to take down an app. we'll have a list of best practices.

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But we will also apply our judgment.

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The process will be transparent. And consistently applied. Not favorites based on size of app

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Re Facebook Connect... Make the Web more social. The pieces are:
1. Authentication via FB acount
2. Identiy comes in from FB
3. Friends access to your site
4. Dynamic Privacy. As you change your privacy setting on FB, they change on the sites.
5. Social Distribution. Content on sites goes back up to FB

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Also APIs for Desktop and Mobile.

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This fall, annoucning FB Connect for iphone, a Coco framework for developers.

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Facebook supporting the Open Web Foundation...

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I'll be talking with David Recordan about this later. It's his baby. FB will be contributing to it.