Facebook’s f8 2010

Tony Zanders

We’re front row at this year’s f8 – Facebook’s Annual Developers Conference in San Francisco, CA. We ran into one of our friends at Facebook who’s been up all night to make sure everything runs smoothly today, and she guaranteed that we’re in for a treat. A far cry from higher ed conferences and trade shows we attend throughout the year, the setup, layout, and creativity f8 they put into this conference is second to none.

Alot of information will be distributed today, and we’ll be working hard to keep you posted on our Twitter account. The most exciting thing that’s been announced so far is something that started off as a fun project within Facebook, and is being tested out at f8. It’s called Presence, and it’s a new way to keep your Facebook friends informed about where you are. To use the service, you have to have a “Facebook Token,” which was distributed to all attendees at f8.

Linking Your Facebook Token

New announcements from Mark Zuckerberg’s Keynote

Graph API gives developers access to public data Facebook has about users, events, pages, etc… without any of the heavy lifting it used to require. Simply visit http://graph.facebook.com/username, also being able to add (music, books, friends, events, links, pages, about that user)

Social plugins allows a website to provide instant social experiences to every visitor. They suspect to launch over 1 Billion ‘Like’ buttons over the next 24 hours. This will an example of having your real friends, and real identity wherever you are around the web. They are building towards a web where the default is social. Learn more about social plugins here.

Platform Simplification Facebook rebuilt the core of the Facebook platform with simplicity, stability, and the open graph in mind. Already for f8, Facebook has worked with over 75 partners including ESPN, Pandora, Microsoft, and CNN.