F8, the Facebook Developers Conference, is running on Live Stream as I type this, discussing the development of Open Graph applications.
Rolling out in the next couple of months is the new Timeline and Open Graph.
Timeline: The Story of Your Life. All your stories, All your Apps, Express who you are.
The new face of Facebook.
Essentially, your profile will look less like a standard classified ad, and more like a finely tuned picture diary that is uniquely your own. This concept is supposed to allow profile pages to look different based on the person’s interests. A fan of health and exercise will own a profile that largely differs from a fan of music, or cars, etc.
Open Graph: A New Class of Apps. Frictionless experiences. Realtime serendipity. Finding patterns.
Open Graph is what will keep your profile running uniquely. You’ll be able to share your music, books, recipes, and running paths and distances all in a way that will entice fellow enthusiasts on your friend list to share their fun and work as well. Silly app boxes will completely disappear from the sidelines and become more seamlessly integrated within the main profile.
Based on backend statistics, Facebook and their partners discovered that viral works. There’s a good chance that what your friends enjoy will be the same type of entertainment that you will enjoy.
Partnering up with Spotify, Facebook wants their users to share their love of music, generating an increase in music sales from impulse purchasing through those friends, and simultaneously counter piratism of music… at least within the United States.
For a globally based company, it became increasingly apparent that all of these new apps shared during F8 are geared towards the American audience. Hulu doesn’t allow viewers to watch video outside of the US. Netflix is in Canada (and 47 other countries), but doesn’t have the same amount of content available outside of the US either.
My DH and I have been re-watching “Amazing Stories” for the past week. Our other choice was “Quantum Leap”. Both were great TV in their day, but listening to the CEO of Netflix discuss “Pirates of the Carribean” and “Breaking Bad” kinda left things a bit sour for me. I’ll freely admit that I LOVE TV and Movie entertainment, and will watch at least one show a day. And despite not getting the newer material on my Netflix account due to where I live, I’ll still keep my membership going in hopes that the New Arrivals will be more like Burn Notice and less of Murder She Wrote in the near future (yes, MSW was a “New” arrival to Netflix about two weeks ago.)
I’m now only imagining all of the “This Content Is Not Available In Your Area.” errors that I will see on a day to day basis on Facebook, because my American friends have access to stuff I can’t watch due to location.
If I only hung with Canadians, this wouldn’t be an issue, but I’m connected to people all over the globe on Facebook; and am thus looking forward to all the blocked links they will share.
Nike+ GPS and how Facebook can keep track of where you are at all times.
Back at the F8, Lifestyle Apps were discussed and are intended to help you “discover who you are.” Such as Nike+ GPS for running, Foodspotting for an online cookbook wrote by you (and possibly your friends), there are dozens of apps already developed for you to share your life online.
And the “Share” box will be less of a disaster on the new platform. There is nothing so aggravating as trying to use an app that wants you to advertise for them the moment you set up your permissions. You’ll have to read your approvals more closely, but there will be a checkbox to deny random Share requests from popping up.
My only hope is that this will decrease FarmVille requests on my current timeline, but perhaps that’s still just a dream.
Two keywords that were spouted often were “Frictionless” (a perpetual motion machine) and “Serendipity” (The occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way).
A really neat experience… A frictionless experience. – Mark Zuckerberg
Open Graph is about self-expression and serendipity.
So Facebook hopes to integrate themselves further into your day-to-day living. Taking your “Real-Life” persona and turning it into your online one as well. Possibly containing the split personality feeling you may sometimes get as you compartmentalise the Twitter-you, Facebook-you and the Real-you.
Whether they succeed, or just make their users all that more flabergasted, Timelines will only tell.
