Facebook
delivered new services, including a new “Timeline” at its annual f8
developer conference.
Introducing
the new approach to a user’s profile on the popular social networking platform,
Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, described the new Timeline as a
way to tell the story of a user’s life. He said it is a “new way to express who
you are.”
The f8 keynote
began with actor/comedian Andy Samberg taking the stage and hamming it up as
Zuckerberg until the real Zuckerberg came on to address the Facebook faithful.
And faithful the platform’s users are.
Zuckerberg
said, “For the first time ever in a single day we had 500 million people use
Facebook.”
In a Sept.
22 blog post aimed at developers, Bret Taylor, chief technology
officer at Facebook, said, “As we have continued to introduce more features on
Facebook Platform, now more than 500 million people engage with Facebook across
more than 7 million applications and websites every month. Compared to f8 last
year, this is close to double the number of people and triple the apps and
websites.”
Moreover,
Taylor further described Timeline as “a page on which you can put the
events and activities that matter most to you. We provide some of the most
important stuff that you'd want to put there, like photos and major life
events—but those types of content are really just the start. With the Open
Graph, you, as Facebook developers, can enable people to truly make their
Timelines their own.”
In addition,
he said all developers will have access to a pre-release version of Timeline
for testing after your application is configured to use Open
Graph actions and objects.
Taylor also
said Timeline will launch to users in the coming weeks. People will be able to
add applications to their Timeline to show friends what they love, seamlessly
update Timeline with their activity as they go, and have an easy way to
reengage with the application, he said.
In a separate
post, Sam Lessin, a product manager at Facebook said, “The way your profile
works today, 99% of the stories you share vanish. The only way to find the
posts that matter is to click "Older Posts" at the bottom of the
page. Again. And again.”
However,
“Imagine if there was an easy way to rediscover the things you shared, and
collect all your best moments in a single place,” Lessin said. “With timeline,
now you have a home for all the great stories you've already shared. They don't
just vanish as you add new stuff. Timeline is wider than your old profile, and
it's a lot more visual. The first thing you'll notice is the giant photo
right at the top. This is your cover, and it's completely up to you which of
your photos you put here.
As you scroll
down past your cover, you'll see your posts, photos and life events as they
happened in time. You choose what's featured on your timeline. You can star
your favorites to double their size or hide things altogether.”
Facebook also
introduced a new beta of the Open Graph. “The Open
Graph is the most significant update to Platform since it launched
in 2007, expanding the capabilities and opportunities for social applications,
from music to TV to news to lifestyle applications such as cooking, fitness and
travel,” Taylor said.
Application
discovery is an important part of the Open Graph philosophy, Taylor added. The
structure of the Open Graph enables applications to grow more quickly based on
usage. “The more engaging your app is, the more people will discover it on
Facebook,” he said,
A description
of the Open Graph Protocol on the Facebook site reads:
The Open
Graph Protocol enables you to integrate your Web pages into the social graph.
It is currently designed for Web pages representing profiles of real-world
things—things like movies, sports teams, celebrities, and restaurants. Including
Open Graph tags on your Web page, makes your page equivalent to a Facebook
page. This means when a user clicks a Like button on your page, a connection is made
between your page and the user. Your page will appear in the "Likes and
Interests" section of the user's profile, and you have the ability to
publish updates to the user. Your page will show up in the same places that
Facebook pages show up around the site (e.g., search), and you can target ads
to people who like your content. The structured data you provide via the Open
Graph Protocol defines how your page will be represented on Facebook.
The Open Graph
Beta is now available to all Facebook developers. “This beta gives you access
to the docs and tools you need to add Open Graph actions
and objects to your app,” Taylor said.
Facebook also
introduced new analytics for developers. “From the Dev App,
you will be able to see analytics for all the Open Graph activity
published by your app,” Taylor said. “You will be able to optimize your app’s
Graph Rank based on this information.”
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