Why would you have spent any time at f8, Facebook's annual conference? This year's was held in San Francisco last month, and while it is available on the web (facebook.com/f8), it is billed as a developers' conference. Marketers were not specifically invited, there was only one mention of marketing on the agenda, and Mark Zuckerberg didn't mention it once in his 90-minute keynote address.
As a whole, marketers stay away, but just watching that keynote, three things stood out that are pretty important for our industry. First, it was all about the user. Facebook's upcoming redesign will change a lot, expanding the connections between people, things and experiences. The ambition is to weave the social network into the fabric of its users' lives, making sharing an automatic part of activity. The site's limitless ambition is going to spin off disruption of some industries, and opportunities for others.
Second, the absence of any mention of advertising or marketing was significant. The functionality being launched, if successful with users, will increase the already vast amount of time people spend on the site. An important milestone was passed in September, when more than half a billion people used the site in a single day; consumers obviously like hanging out there, and that is important news if we want a place to talk with them. We are going to have to figure out how that works, however; beyond a few tools, Facebook is not going to do it for us.
Finally, there was a fascinating insight into what media might look like in the future. It has long been possible to like people on the site, and last year the 'like' function was extended to things. Now, we could like events, things people said, apps. In the redesign, 'like' becomes a variety of verbs, including 'watched', 'listened', 'read' and 'ran'; so people can just report what they did, without necessarily liking it. These notifications are now shared by default, so a user listening to a track on Spotify automatically posts it to an area, the ticker, introduced to carry apparently trivial stuff, separate to the newsfeed, where 'important' stuff goes.
This distinction is vital, preventing you cluttering up your friends' feeds every time you watch a film (and making sure you don't turn it off). It is what happens when you couple this with the consumption of media using Facebook apps that is interesting.
A wide variety of media companies has worked with Facebook to create apps that allow the consumption of their content through the social network. These include video sites such as Hulu and Netflix, news sites such as the Guardian, Telegraph and Economist, and music sites such as Spotify.
Now, if I listen to a Kasabian track on Spotify's app, that action will be posted to my ticker. Any friend viewing my ticker can click there and listen to the same track; the fact they did this is posted, too. If several of my friends listen to the track, that might feature on the newsfeed, notifying me that something interesting has happened.
The same thing happens with movies, TV programmes, books read on Kindle and trails run on Nike+, bringing a fresh social layer to the experience of consuming content.
It moves the centre of gravity away from the EPG or the editor, and toward our friends as the source of recommendations for what we watch, read or listen to. It changes the dynamic of the relationship between content, consumer and distributor. Since mass marketers rely on that dynamic to reach billions of consumers, f8 might just be worth paying attention to.
- Andrew Walmsley is a digital pluralist
30 SECONDS ON ... THE f8 CONFERENCE
- The Facebook 'f8' conference aims to bring together the developers and business people who are building the social network. It takes place in San Francisco, California. It began in 2007 and has taken place annually since, except in 2009, when it was cancelled.
- Major changes to the site tend to be announced at the conference. The social graph was unveiled there in 2007; in 2008, a new profile page was introduced; and in 2010, delegates were told of the development of the site's 'like' button.
- The two major changes announced this year were the 'timeline' and 'ticker'. Chief executive Mark Zuckerberg described the timeline as the 'story of your life'. It allows users to jump back to their earliest posts on Facebook.
- The ticker is the next part of the site's 'open graph'. When a user adds activity via open graph, it will go on the ticker, as opposed to posts, which show up on the news feed. Zuckerberg said the feature will allow 'a completely new class of social apps'.