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Why Facebook Connect Matters & Why It Will Win
Facebook kicked off their second annual developer conference in San Francisco this afternoon with a keynote by founder & CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The overproduced keynote, with too many words repeatedly incessantly, seemed like a lullaby sung by a nanny in a language alien to yours. There were some who compared Mark with Steve Jobs after last year’s presentation. Now, having watched the two weave their respective spells, I would say the comparison would be as exaggerated as equating the thespian abilities of Colin Ferrell with those of George Clooney.
These non-important and highly personal observations aside, I came away fairly impressed with what Mark & Company are doing with their Facebook Connect (FC) system. (The program launched today with 24 partners, and a press release. It will go into beta soon.) As a caveat, there is very little information available on how FC is going to work “technically.” Still, It seems Facebook has a much better chance of succeeding where Microsoft and othesr have failed. FC’s integration into services of partners like Digg and Six Apart makes it very clear that it is more than just a simple web ID system play.
In addition to offering a simple authentication method, FC allows granular social interactions to be embedded in non-Facebook services. If Facebook can work with its partners to build interesting use-case scenarios that go beyond simple sign-on, it is quite feasible that Facebook can out-execute Google, MySpace and everyone else with its ID ambitions.
Why? Because this is their one chance of building a monetization engine. The company makes no bones about trying to build a platform that allows it to offer branded advertising in a manner akin to Google’s Adsense. A simpler person (like yours truly) would call this a platform that serves ads for all occasions, reasons and seasons.
As I pointed out yesterday, Facebook Connect is the second iteration of the Beacon system and seems to be much less draconian and evil than the first version. Of course, it has been improved enough to become the underpinning of a highly effective advertising platform.
When you use Facebook Connect on a web service outside of Facebook, say Digg or Xobni, you are transmitting back “a little something about you” to the proverbial Facebook brain. I will use the example of the service built by Six Apart to illustrate my point.
If you visit a blog that is published using Six Apart’s Movable Type publishing system, you can leave a comment by using Facebook Connect for authentication of your ID. Your comment on a blog post can also be published to your Facebook account. This is fairly standard ID stuff.
However, it is the act of leaving a comment that is more important. You are essentially telling Facebook’s proverbial brain what topics — blogs or specific posts — with which you like to engage. In other words, you just told the system a little bit about yourself. Now imagine such information coming from dozens of Facebook Connect partners.
Each service adds a few more data points about you inside the Facebook brain, which is quite aware of your activities inside the Facebook ecosystem. The brain can then crunch all that information and build a fairly accurate image of who you are, what you like and what might interest you. With all that information at its disposal, Facebook can build a fairly large cash register.
In comparison with the Beacon system, this is almost benign. Beacon drew scorn & spit and my personal disdain, mostly because it sought to make commercial gains by compromising people’s privacy without giving them any choice. In comparison, the new system asks you to make a choice. By signing in to partner sites using the Facebook identity system, you are essentially saying yes and plugging into the Facebook brain. (I hope that Facebook and its partners learned from the mistakes of the past and make it very clear to their users how the system is going to work, and how their privacy/personal information will be used.)
At the post-keynote press confab (I skipped since I had to go see my doctor), when asked how the company will make money, Mark apparently said the company isn’t currently focused on monetization and will be looking to extend their platform’s reach. He doesn’t have to - if Facebook Connect works, the money will follow.
Digg To (Finally) Integrate OpenID, If This Picture Is To Be Believed
When Digg’s Lead Architect Joe Stump took the stage at the Facebook Developer Conference in San Francisco earlier today, something in one of his screen shots caught our attention. He was there to show how users will soon be able to log in to Digg without an account via their Facebook credentials (the new Facebook Connect product). But also included prominently in the screen, but not mentioned by Stump, was an option to log in via OpenID.
Digg founder Kevin Rose promised OpenID integration at a conference in early 2007, but the company has been silent on it since then. Like many other companies, they seemed to enjoy the positive press that the announcement made but were unwilling to schedule the development time to actually implement it.
Facebook Connect isn’t slated to go live until the Fall, and we assume they’ll push OpenID at the same time. We asked OpenID’s David Recordan what he knew - he said he noticed the same thing we did but doesn’t have any additional information on when or if Digg would finally implement the single sign-on solution. We also have an email in to Digg for comment.
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Liveblogging the Facebook Developer Conference
The TechCrunch team is on site at the Facebook Developer conference, and we’ll be live blogging the news. Mark Zuckerberg’s Keynote starts at 1:30 pm PST.
Facebook’s press release is here.
Live Coverage
In a press briefing after the keynote, Zuckerberg stated “I wish I knew” when asked when the anticipated payments system would launch. He also hinted that Facebook is working on launching improved search, but they aren’t close to launching it yet.
2:49 PM: That’s it. The show is over.
2:48 PM: Great Apps can integrate with users just like native Facebook apps, and they get early access to features. The Great Apps program is in alpha stage and the first two partners are iLike and Causes. There will be a strong enforcement system with all apps, and they will disable apps that are a problem. Over the last year they’ve disabled apps for violation of privacy or other policies. They take this very seriously, he says.
2:47 PM: The second announcement is the Facebook Great Apps Program (Top Tier program). They embody all ten of the guiding principles, and they advance the mission of Facebook.
2:46 PM: They’re announcing two new programs: a verification program is first - this is the lower tier of the two programs. Starting in September they will invite apps that are secure, respectful and transparent to apply to be verified. Trusted apps get a special badge in the directory and app page. (we posted on this earlier, here)
2:44 PM: They have partnerships with partners to help developer (Microsoft), host and scale. They are launching a new developer website that gives all the information needed for a quick start. He says 1000 apps have been submitted to the Facebook fund. They are revealing the names of fbFund’s recipients to date: Challenge, ConnectedWeddings, Podclass, MyListo, Trazzler, Zimride, LuckyCal, Coursefeed, Hotberry, and J2Play.
They are announcing a new competition today. $2M will be given out over the next two months. Facebook will select 25 finalists who will each get 25k. Users will vote on finalists who will each get 250k.
2:43 PM: He says they must keep the ecosystem safe for users and fair for developers. A year ago equal distribution became overwhelming to users, then they made restrictive changes that hurt apps. Going forward they will have different rules. They are announcing several programs to help app developers. Get Started Quickly tools like adding easy FBML tags.
2:42 PM: He says that they’ve learned a lot in the last year, as they’ve had lots of challenges. Facebook is listening to the community. They’re trying to partner more closely with developers. He says they are making organizational changes that let developers incorporate feedback during the dev process, and they’re creating full time community management organization
2:40 PM: “Security is a big part of it, apps can’t share information with other users unless they obey privacy settings. Apps must also be respectful of the users attention and time. Don’t make users invite 20 friends before you use the app, or spam friends without them knowing. Apps must be very transparent. Users should get what they expect when they click, not an interstitial ad. Design is also important - clean design is a must. And apps must be fast loading and responsive. As the apps get faster, users use them more. Apps need to focus on being robust and scaling properly as they grow.”
2:39 PM: “Building trustworthy applications is important because we live in an ecosystem with network effects. If users leave, everyone suffers. Apps must be safe and trusted.”
2:37 PM: He says apps must be useful. The carpool app is great example, which lets users find carpool buddies. “Apps must also be expressive”- The graffiti app that lets users draw on friends profiles, is a good example. Finally, meaningful apps must be engaging. He says Playfish makes games that are highly engaging. Facebook users have played over 900 million minutes of Playfish games. That’s about 1800 years.
2:35 PM: Benjamin is announcing “guiding principles for great applications” which are based on dialog with community. It’s based on three pillars: meaningful, trustworthy and well designed. The best apps make use of the social graph. Applications must be social. A good example is the Lil Green Patch app, which helps users fight global warming by interacting with other users.
2:33 PM: Benjamin Ling, Director of Platform Program Management is now on stage talking about the “State of Platform.” He says that over $200m has been invested in Facebook apps, $34m this week alone. Additionally, 13 different ad networks have launched that pay out tens of millions of dollars to app developers. He says, “venture capital, ad networks, developers and academics are the ecosystem that makes Facebook platform a success.”
2:32 PM: Mark wraps things up, that appears to be the end of the announcements.
2:31 PM: Zuckerberg asked all Facebook employees who work on platform to stand up, then asked all app developers to stand up.
2:29 PM: “Give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected.” - Facebook’s mission statement
2:28 PM: To recap, he’s talked about new profiles and the highlighting of the news feed, the second item is Facebook Connect. The new profile launched Monday, he says. Facebook Connect will launch developer keys starting today - there will be a beta period.
2:26 PM: That’s it for launch partners. Mark is back on stage.
2:25 PM: A new site will have a “my friends” tab that shows reviews by friends in various cities.
2:23 PM: Mike Philips from Citysearch is taking the stage. He says they are launching a new site, where sharing information is a big piece. They are integrating with Facebook Connect. When a user looks for a hotel, restaurant, etc., Citysearch already has lots of reviews and data, but not a way to link up reviews from friends.
2:22 PM: When you login to comment, users can sign in via Movable Type or Facebook. If you sign in with Facebook, it will display changes - light blue boxes outline your friend’s comments.
2:20 PM: David Recordon from Six Apart just took the stage. They are releasing a plugin for Movable Type that allows people to comment using their Facebook profiles. Users can decide to profiles or keep them private.
2:17 PM: Digg is now allowing people to sign into Digg via Facebook or OpenID. There is no requirement to sign up for a Digg account.
2:15 PM: Launch partners are now coming on stage. First up is Digg by Joe Stump.
2:13 PM: Facebook Connect can show you which of your Facebook friends are also on the outside service, so you can link up with them there too. They are also allowing people to leave comments and requests on third party sites.
2:12 PM: Facebook Connect will let applications share data with Facebook. Users can bring Facebook friends with them to outside sites.
2:11 PM: Mark is now talking about Facebook Connect.
2:10 PM: He says he wants Facebook to be the platform and tools provider, but let apps do anything social they want.
2:08 PM: Mark says we are going to see the decentralization of social networking into apps on the web. Things will decentralize further, apps can run anywhere on the web, not just on social network platforms. They will all work together, just be decentralized.
2:05 PM: People (including us) are writing wall posts for Mark since he has his profile live on stage, but it looks like he’s actually using a fake profile, it shows just 8 friends.
2:03 PM: Mark is now showing a live demo of the new home page.
2:02 PM: Mark says they haven’t completely gotten rid of app boxes, they’re added a tab for them. Some apps really need them. Users can also add tabs for individual apps.
1:59 PM: He says the apps that leverage the news feed the best will be the ones that succeed.
1:58 PM: “The most important part of the profile is the wall and the news feed, which have now been merged. They also give developers an incentive to build apps that let users share a lot of information. This is a lot better than an application box, which people don’t interact with as much.”
1:56 PM: Mark is now talking about the new profile pages and how it fits in with their current goals.
1:54 PM: Mark says that over the last year Facebook hasn’t done enough to reward applications that provide a lot of long term value, and they haven’t punished the ones abusing the system.
1:53 PM: Mark is talking about lessons Facebook has learned. He says that they released the platform as quickly as possible, it wasn’t fully baked yet, and they didn’t anticipate the huge adoption.
1:52 PM: Mark says the most powerful tool on Facebook today is the News Feed. Traffic went up by 50% when they first launched news feed in late 2006.
1:51 PM: Mark is now talking about the social graph, a concept he introduced at the first f8 conference.
1:49 PM: LivingSocial just announced they received $5M in Funding, Flixster received $6M from Allen and Company, and Zynga got $29M from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Zuckerberg says, “There has been more than $200 million invested in the ecosystem.”
1:47 PM: David Glazer (Director of Engineering, Friend Connect) is here in the audience (which is about 1500 people), it looks like he will announce something. Perhaps they are announcing some kind of agreement.
1:45 PM: “We’re opening up the translation tool to allow apps to be translated as well…We now have more than 400k developers building on top of the platform. The developer community is spread around the world. More than half are outside of the US.
1:43 PM: Mark is now talking about opening up Facebook for translations made by users. They started with Spanish and French, and now the site is available in over 60 languages.
1:41 PM: Mark is looking back over the last year and says it’s been pretty crazy. Over 24 million people were using Facebook a year ago - today they are at 90 million people.
1:38 PM: Mark says its time to take the Facebook platform to the next level. On a recent vacation he realized (1) they want to build a product that really lets you connect with people, and (2) they want to extend the concept of presence, have more open connections and share more. They want to make the world a more open place
“The most important information is only available if people share it, and have the power and the tools to do so”
1:35 PM: Mark takes the stage and welcomes the crowd.
1:30 PM: Still waiting for Mark Zuckerberg to take the stage.
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It’s Facebook Day! Say Hello To The Three Tier App System
Update: Our live notes from Mark Zuckerberg’s Keynote are here.
Today is definitely Facebook day as they hold their second annual F8 developers conference in San Francisco. Last year they released their developer platform, which led competitors to hurriedly release their own competing offerings. What’s in store for tomorrow? We’ve made our predictions, and CEO Mark Zuckerberg takes the stage at 1:30 to make his keynote, and workshops will follow all day after that. The full schedule is here.
Some of the news is breaking early. For example, we will almost certainly see the Facebook payments platform launch in some form, for example - Facebook desperately wants to find a way to help application developers make money beyond advertising, and the iPhone App Store has shown that people are willing to pay for quality applications.
Even more certain is the launch of Facebook Connect, which will allow third party services to authenticate Facebook users and merge profile data into their offerings. Digg will be one of their launch partners, and will show off the new product on stage, say our sources. However, neither CEO Jay Adelson or Founder Kevin Rose will attend the event.
We’ve also heard from sources that Facebook will announce a tiering system for applications, confirming our previous post in March. Five to ten top tier apps, which have proven themselves trustworthy and which create as good or better a user experience as what Facebook is able to create itself, will be named in the near future. iLike (music) and Causes (charity) will be announced tomorrow, and more will come soon. We heard that Flixster (movies) was on the short list but was bumped at the last minute - perhaps due to their MySpace partnership announced yesterday.
Other apps will be grouped into a middle tier, where most of them will fall, and a bottom “unwashed masses” tier for untrustworthy or spammy apps that have little user value. Each tier will have different rules for engaging with users, particularly around invites, messaging and entry into the news feed.
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Digg, Facebook Connect to Headline at f8Con
Updated: Now that Facebook has announced its redesign, which features a new improved news feed, what will Mark Zuckerberg, the enigmatic and somewhat shy CEO of Facebook, announce when he gets on stage at the f8 conference in San Francisco tomorrow, on July23rd? No, I don’t mean a plain ole a platform upgrade.
That is a question haunting many Silicon Valley insiders, especially since there has been a perceptible cooling of investor interest in Facebook applications that fall into the “pointless†category. What’s not helping matters is that senior Facebook executives are downplaying tomorrow’s announcement, saying this is about developers and that nothing new should be expected. Having covered Silicon Valley for a long time, I know that companies use that as a diversionary tactic. Some have speculated that it might be some sort of a payment system. Update: One of my sources tells me, however, that payments won’t be on their announcement agenda.
My sources tell me that the focus of Mark Zuckerberg’s presentation will be mostly on Facebook Connect, a web ID system. It’s essentially a system that enables application and web developers to allow web surfers to sign in to their Facebook identities. The move would highlight Facebook’s desire to become a critical part of the web infrastructure, and moving away from the just-another-social-network image.
Facebook announced Facebook Connect in May in what seemed to be a response to MySpace & Google’s moves to tout their individual web ID systems. Facebook Connect also allows companies to send status alerts back into the Facebook system where they can be displayed on Facebook’s news feed. The newly redesigned feed seems to be perfectly designed for an onslaught of such personal data. In many ways the new system would be a more palatable version of the draconian and ill-conceived Beacon advertising system.
Facebook Connect in many ways is the exact opposite approach taken by the company last year when it encouraged hundreds of developers to create applications that lived inside its silo. These applications grew at a breakneck speed and created a bubble of their own. They also put the Facebook infrastructure under extreme stress and on a cost curve that only large revenue streams can support. The inane and pointless apps cost the company a lot of bandwidth, not to mention the rising hardware costs.
By asking people to take their “identification†system, the company is hoping that others will build applications on their own infrastructure, allowing Facebook to focus on developing more high-level services and focusing their infrastructure dollars properly.
As part of the Facebook Connect announcement, expect around 20-odd companies that are using the system on their end. One of the highlights of Mark’s showcase would be Digg, which would use Facebook Connect to create a personalized home page that takes into account social news recommendations from friends on Facebook.
Digg, as you might remember, was one of the first companies to sign up for Facebook Connect. The two companies share a common investor, Greylock Ventures. This new closeness might explain why Google might be finally ready to buy the San Francisco-based Digg for $200 million. Why would Google buy instead of building their own Digg? It could help block Facebook Connect, for one.
Apart from Digg, there are a bunch of other companies that are building Facebook into their products, though many of them are actually more on the “useful†end of the application spectrum. Our sources have indicated that Facebook might out-execute their much bigger and richer rivals with Facebook Connect, and tomorrow might be the first chance the rest of the world gets a chance to get a glimpse.
Bonus link: Follow tomorrow’s event on AllFacebook.
Photo courtesy of Facebook
Google In Final Negotiations To Acquire Digg For “Around $200 Millionâ€
Google’s on and off negotiations with Digg have been back on in a big way for the last six weeks, we’ve heard from multiple sources inside and outside of Google. The two companies have reportedly signed a letter of intent and are close to a deal that will bring Digg under the Google News property. The acquisition price is in the $200 million range, says one source.
We first wrote about the Google-Digg negotiations in March. Despite a vigorous denial by Digg CEO Jay Adelson the negotiations continued, although Google’s Marissa Mayer reportedly cooled on the company for a period of time.
The companies are now in final negotiations according to our sources, although it could be a couple of weeks before it closes. And while the major deal points have been agreed on, the acquisition could still fall apart. Microsoft, which was previously interested in the company, may be willing to step back in at a much lower price.
Most of Digg’s revenue comes from a three year ad deal with Microsoft, which will be terminated on a sale to Google. Digg has raised $11.3 million in venture capital.
Meanwhile, Google’s fascination with the Digg voting concept continues.
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Propeller 2.0 Launches: Ditching The Vote Count, Adding A Mascot
Propeller, AOL’s Digg-like news site, launches version 2.0 later this morning. The site sports a new design and logo and now has a mascot - described as “part professor, part citizen journalist” (see image below).
But the biggest feature change is the removal of a pure Digg-like vote count. In its place is an algorithm based popularity ranking of 1-10, which takes into account “many more aspects of participation” when determining popularity. Voting on a story is now called the more nebulous “prop it.” The service has also cut down the number of news categories. Those remaining include Arts & Entertainment, Business & Finance, Family, Humor, News, Science & Technology, Sports and Style.
Taking a page from the Yahoo Buzz playbook, headlines from the service will also be integrated directly into AOL and AOL News.
Propeller has had a rocky history. It first launched in June 2006 under the Netscape.com domain as “a better Digg” in that paid editors chose the top stories from user-submitted and voted links. Soon the site was paying top Digg users to move to them.
In August 2007 rumors circulated that the site was going to be shut down. We called it “Kaput” last September, but we were wrong: the site would live on under a new domain, Propeller.com.
Netscape traffic promptly spiked downward, but Propeller, led by general manager Tom Drapeau, filled the gap and has had steady growth since then.
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