"f8: Facebook Developer Conference Overview"

Table of Contents

f8: Facebook Developer Conference

Overview

Tagline

f8 is for developers, entrepreneurs and innovators who are creating a more social web.

Track

Core track for the day was: Building & Growing Great Social Apps.

Sessions

10:00AM Opening Keynote

Amusing start with SNL.

Growth was key

Core goal originally was to connect people and the focus was primarily on growth.

.5 billion people used Facebook on a single day.

New goal is the depth of engagement

The original goal was to focus on the profile.

5 minutes of a conversation

Analogy is the first five minutes when you meet someone. The first iteration of the product was just basic data that

15 minutes into the conversation

The feed was the next iteration and was designed to allow people to look at what you've done recently.

The rest of the conversation: timeline
Timeline: summary

Allows summarization of the content.

Timeline: view

During a view of a particular timeline element some content is hidden.

Timeline: composition

Allow composing elemnts of the timeline.

Timeline: maps

Show everywhere that you've been.

Apps express reportable time-enabled

Original goal was to work around the proliferation of boxes.

Adding an app critically comes from

Completely new permision screen
Summarize "who you are."

Examples noted: traveller, musician, runner. p Focus is on externalized consumption and engagement; social competition and expression.

Population of the timeline with new media and lifestyle application

What is the implication for Memory Lane?

Adding lightweight activity
New permissioning diaogs

This allows the type of informatoin pushed into.

New applications are canvas applications
Example: Music: Spotify

Ticker has lightweight activity. Like having IRC on the web but with friends.

The example also indicated an approach for looking at interesting new patterns.

This also includes social co-listening of events. Very heavy realtime work for the chat and synchronization of 12.

Example: Movies: Netflix

Social aspects of Netflix means that growth is possible.

What is considered growth for a particular year against the monetization of a platform.

Example: News: Washington Post

Aggregates topic areas as well in the feed.

Example: Games: Words with Friends

Shows individual game elements with pictures.

Example: Lifestyle: Nike+ and Foodspotting

Friends and general data.

Allows aggregated reports.

People add applications to indicate to others what is important

Not sure why this would be relevant for target audience.

Indications of 'what is important to me' may not have timelineable activities through a specific application.

Making an OpenGraph application
  • Model your applications social intentions
  • Design the timeline integration (6 new views)
  • Add to timeline to application

Add to timeline should work on all mobile application. The goal is to move away from the desktop for sharing to mobile instead.

Developer beta has access to mobile platforms.

Applicaton discovery with Graph Rank

New AI for highlighting content. This is personalized for Mom doesn't see GitHub checkins but will see movies.

12:30PM Getting Started with OpenGraph

What are the
What actions can a user take on the site
Create a spot for each URL class for your site

This would correspond to all of the available data.

Get teh sample code

curl -F 'accesstoken=AAADGCpaUdT8BAPReybLQjJwB29fi2nnkDEOi1RdHfzKn1KofdGnh8sMpFYDARuaWqdmZAZB9AcGs99SHjrDenOw6UkUTiygLwpEOH9L6JcWIYksgq2' \ -F 'lunch=http://samples.ogp.me/217751854950710' \ 'https://graph.facebook.com/me/shwalpoc:toss'

View all of the actions for the site

% curl 'https://graph.facebook.com/me/shwalpoc:toss?accesstoken=AAADGCpaUdT8BAPReybLQjJwB29fi2nnkDEOi1RdHfzKn1KofdGnh8sMpFYDARuaWqdmZAZB9AcGs99SHjrDenOw6UkUTiygLwpEOH9L6JcWIYksgq2'

{"data":[{"id":"2258337376104","from":{"id":"1178471455","name":"Jason Walsh"},"starttime":"2011-09-22T19:55:21+0000","endtime":"2011-09-22T19:55:21+0000","publishtime":"2011-09-22T19:55:21+0000","application":{"id":"217748778284351","name":"f82011 demo "},"data":{"lunch":{"id":"10150384388106350","url":"http:%5C/%5C/samples.ogp.me%5C/217751854950710%22,%22type%22:%22sh_wal_poc:lunch%22,%22title%22:%22Sample Lunch"}},"likes":{"count":0},"comments":{"count":0}}],"paging":{"next":"https:%5C/%5C/graph.facebook.com%5C/me%5C/sh_wal_poc:toss?access_token=AAADGCpaUdT8BAPReybLQjJwB29fi2nnkDEOi1RdHfzKn1KofdGnh8sMpFYDARuaWqdmZAZB9AcGs99SHjrDenOw6UkUTiygLwpEOH9L6JcWIYksgq2&offset=25&limit=25"}}%

Create objects and verb associations
Create the general aggregations
Caption Lines are something to explore more deeply later

2:30PM Hack Better: New Tools for Developers

New defect tracking
Beta released Sunday; programatic access
New users support
Admins now distinct from Developers

3:30PM Inside Mobile HTML5 Development at Facebook

Initially started with m and tablet views
Abstraction layer to handle native features
Core goal is reduring maintenence time
Use internal shim tools
Concerns are much the same but with different context

4:00PM Making Fast Social Apps

Focus on the like button
Standard definition and defense in support of performance

Notes

Not develeper-centric

While a significant number of developers were present the core focus was on media.

Heavy FB staff presence but not active

Facebook staff was well represented but mostly as drivers for the social presence applications. Feels like the 90s.

The product development process for timeline

Clearly based on engineering input to define the technical limits.

Conceptually not a difficult project.

Exmple applications

FriendFeed dumping of all delicious.com, github, Google+, Twitter.

But what about the implications for how Memory Lane could integrate without canibalizing the business.

Monetizing the new lightweight sharing against views of TPC might be an option.

Core Classmates.com business wouldn't have much benefit.

Ticker hacking

Background process that lists random songs.

Ticker just provides more

What is a canvas application for ML or CMO

Each of the mobile applications could be ported. Driving traffic back to the site seems like a lost cause since canvas is essentially an embedding tool.

The product development team specified the work at a philosophical level.

Information design is about having data and building a story.

Worked back from a single hard case with a particular example based on data. The example is the Feltron Annual Report.

The example given was for someone who really is aggressive in tracking data.

What are the cultural assumptions

  • listen to music
  • run
  • eat
  • program

OpenGraph with Memory Lane

  • Viewing content could be just pushed to ticker
  • Comments are likely a scenario where the feed would be updated

Developing these changes should have a small group of a product owner, designer, backend, and frontend developer with support from Content.

The risk is that the ML product wouldn't be integrated seemlesslly into the timeline.

Does one dump information of a particul view of content (which has limited value considering)

Profile visits aren't a viable product since it would be direct competitor with Guestbook.

The example could be for the scrapbooking project. Still, for uploading the content, it seems like Facebook.

Timeline is even internally referenced in the Facebook narrative as being a scrapbooking project.

Author: Jason Walsh

j@wal.sh

Last Updated: 2025-07-30 13:45:27

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