Last year in May, we held a big developer conference, f8. As you may know, we used f8 to introduce Facebook Platform—a development system that enables developers to build applications on Facebook, where all of our 90 million users can interact with them.

Honestly, the fact that applications grew so quickly was a surprise—even to us. We've learned a lot in this last year, and with success also found a new set of problems that we needed to solve. This year at f8, we talked about a lot of our new solutions and how they all fit together. We'd like to share all of that with you, as well.

At Facebook, we want to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected. With that in mind, here are some of the big announcements from f8 08:

• The new profile: You may already know about the new profile, and we hope you've already spent some time looking at the new Facebook. By surfacing more recent and relevant information, and by cleaning up and simplifying the site, we think the new Facebook makes it even easier to connect and communicate with your friends.


• Facebook Connect: Facebook Connect is a new way to use applications, on the open web and not just on Facebook. Soon, you'll be able to use your Facebook account to login and connect on websites throughout the web. Imagine never filling out another profile at a new site, or having to find your friends all over again. Facebook Connect will help make this a reality and allow you to use Facebook to share information from all over the web with your friends.


• Facebook Platform across the world: If you're a regular reader of this blog, you've probably read about the unique way we've translated Facebook-asking bilingual users to help us get into more languages more quickly. Now, your favorite applications can also access this framework so that everyone, everywhere, has a full suite of applications to choose from.


• Great Apps: After a year of many changes, we've decided to launch a program that promotes the applications that are meaningful, trustworthy, and well-designed. This means that we'll be promoting applications that help you share information and earn your trust. Our first two Great Apps are iLike and Causes, but be on the lookout for more to come.

Our developers have been a huge asset to our users and we owe them a big thanks. The applications they've developed have added new experiences to Facebook, and we're really looking forward to what is to come, and we hope you are too. Stay tuned for another big year.



Ben is the Director of Platform Program Management.