I attended F8, the Facebook Developer’s Conference, last week and so I wanted to jot down some of the highlights before I forget. First, I must say that the Conference was one of the better ones I have attended recently. From the solid organization, to the awesome speakers, to the great food – I really enjoyed myself and got a lot out of the event. Sometimes I’ll attend a conference and walk away telling myself “wow, that was a big waste of time;” but F8 was a valuable experience. So here are the headlines as I can recall:

• No more 24-hour limit on caching user data. Originally, Facebook told developers not to store user data within their applications for more than 24 hours; this was primarily intended to “force” all data to be the most up-to-date (if a user’s profile info changed overnight, it may not be reflected in application that simply cached the data forever.) The only way around this was to continuously poll the Facebook servers requesting updates ( = bad for Facebook). The primary reason for lifting this ban, is that now data can be pushed from Facebook to applications. So, as if/when a user’s info is updated, Facebook can broadcast this info out to the apps in a timely manner.
• New (simple) Data Permissions Dialog. Basically, a much better user experience for accessing Facebook data (and easier to develop)
• The Social Graph. This is the idea that the social graph (the way people are all connected together) should extend beyond Facebook (or any single site) and now will make the social connections anywhere we travel on the Web. For example: I use Pandora to map out how music is mapped together, and Yelp to view the world of local businesses; yet, until now, all these connections(relations) were kept separate and out of my social (Facebook) world.
• Graph API. To support Facebook’s inclusion into the Social Graph, Facebook has announced the Graph API. This API enables developers to read and write objects and connections in the Facebook social graph.
• Transitioning away from Facebook Connect. That’s right, moving away from Facebook connect in favor of the new “Login with Facebook.”
• Social Plug-ins. To support the social graph, developers can now include social plugins within their applications and websites. These plugins essentially pull a user’s Facebook friend data into an experience without actually sharing this data with the sites/apps on which they appear. For example:

1. The new Activity Feed plugin can be placed on CNN.com homepage. When I visit CNN.com, the Activity Feed can access my Facebook account and let me know which of my friends have read/commented on which sections of the CNN website.
2. The Like Button. Perhaps the most significant new feature, particularly for digital marketers, is the new Like Button.
3. Recommendations. Similar to Activity Feed, except suggestions recommendations based on input from your friends.
4. Login with Faces
5. Facepile
6. Comments
7. Live Stream

• Open Graph Protocol. This is one I’m personally interested in. This is how we actually integrate our own pages into the social graph – literally turning a web page into a recognizable object within the social graph. This is done by tagging pages so that they can be identified and catalog within the social graph. This has potential for some amazing new things. Imagine how this could impact SEARCH! At the same time, this could lead to abuse and the dilution of valuable data, perhaps to the point where it becomes meaningless; remember the KEYWORD meta tag for Search engines? Still, I’m excited and will keep an eye on this.
• Analytics. Facebook also announced a new, fairly modest Analytics tool that will allow anyone to see a breakdown of the people interacting with them (or their brand). Although the tool itself is hardly on par with Omniture, it certainly offers information that up-until-now has been totally unavailable. For example, the age/sex of your users. Powerful info for marketers. We used this tool to check the stats on a recent project we did at R/GA. Turns out, we absolutely nailed the target demographic of our client. The stats overwhelming supported this. However, had we discovered that we were off, we could have addressed this immediately. Quite powerful.

In summary, this is all pretty darn cool! The idea of opening up the social graph, creating connections, and making the Internet “more social”, is going to continue to shape our digital world. The Like Button, in particular, will be huge for marketing. As a brand, I can quickly connect with my users, create a 1-to-1 relationship with them for communication, have my user’s act as my advertisers (by sharing my brand with their friends throughout their Internet world) and I will even be able to analyze all of this detailed user information in order to make better decisions about my marketing strategies.

More resources:

Graph api - http://developers.facebook.com/docs/api

Reference - http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/api/

FB Docs - http://developers.facebook.com/docs/guides/web

Plugins - http://developers.facebook.com/plugins

OAuth 2.0 protocol - http://github.com/theRazorBlade/draft-ietf-oauth/raw/master/draft-ietf-oauth.txt

PHP SDK: http://github.com/facebook/php-sdk/

R/GA was invited to attend a special event on the future of the iPhone OS; presented by none other than Mr. Steve Jobs himself! My colleague, and our resident iPhone developer guru, Bill, was the lucky man who made the trip (I’m so jealous). After the presentation, Apple posted a video of the event on their website.  As I watched the video, I felt compelled to jot down the key points about what to expect from the new OS. For the most part, it ounds very exciting indeed.

Summary: over 100 user features and over 1500 new developer APIs

The 7 New Functionality 7 “tent-poles”:

1.       Multitasking APIs:

7 New multitasking services

• Background Audio – eg. Pandora can continue to play music even as you switch apps.
• VOIP- eg. Skype can run a phone call and a user can still switch around between apps.
• Location – Continue to track location with GPS in background – eg. Loopt listens to user location, can detect when you’ve moved, update friends. OS4 adding fine-grained settings to check/set which apps are asking for your location.
• Push Notifications (i.e. server-based).
• Local Notifications (don’t need server, app-to-app).
• Task Completion – eg. Flickr can continue to upload photos in the background, even after you switch apps.
• Fast App Switching – as you switch, application(s) status is preserved.

2.       Folders

• Drag apps ontop of eachother to create folders. The folder name is set, by default, to the category name of apps as set in app store. Eg “games.”

3.       Enhanced Mail

• One inbox: all mail accounts dump into unified inbox.
• Fast inpbox switching.
• Threaded messages.
• Open attachments with iPhone apps (by clicking on attachment).

4.       iBooks

• Just like iPad. Buy once read anywhere; sync page and bookmarks between devices.

5.       Enterprise

• better data protection (better encryption).
• providing APIs to developers to control encryption.
• Mobile Device Management.
• Wireless app distribution.
• Multiple Exchange accounts.
• Exchange Server- SSL VPN support.

6.       Game Center

• More than 50,000 games on app store (more than 10x competitors: sony psp, Nintendo DS)
• Social Gaming network.
• Challenge your friends to games.
• Automatic matchmaking. If you’re playing a game, if it requires other people to play, it will find “similar players”
• Leader boards.
• Achievements (what I’ve won).

7.       iAd

• Steve: ”Mobile users do not use Search, they use Apps.”
• Steve: ”Average iPhone user spends over 30 min everyday.”
• 1 billion ad impressions per day.
• Steve: “Emotion + Interactivity”
• Keeps you within your app
• Built into the iPhone OS, developers can add ads via API
• Apple sells and hosts the ads
• Apple will give developers 60% to developers