Big news from Facebook yesterday at F8, their large press and developer conference. They announced the official launch of Facebook Platform, which enables third-party developers to create applications that run on the Facebook network. Users will be able to browse a library of applications and add them to their profile. Users' feeds will notify them if their friends are using new applications, possibly resulting a viral spread of services across the network. Also announced was a surprisingly commercial feature that drew the biggest reaction from the crowd as described by GigaOm's live blog:

Facebook is in a unique position. They've achieved the goal of every social network based service - attracting loyal, young, and well-educated users. They have the allegiance of nearly every young adult in the land and the demographic is broadening upward. Zuckerberg listed off some impressive stats about the company in his presentation:

• They are the 6th most trafficked site in the U.S.
  
• They have more page views than eBay
  
• Their photos app is by far the number one photo site on the internet.
  
• Three times more people are invited to events through Facebook than Evite.com
  
• The fastest growing demographic is the 25 and up age group.
  
• 50% of registered users come back to the site every day
  

On Wednesday I attended a panel discussion on Teens and Tech. It included representatives from Facebook (their product manager), Microsoft, HP, and two well known venture firms. One panelist made an interesting statement - that for any social network to win over new users of college age students, they must sustain popularity for at least three years because freshman entering college will choose whatever network is popular with the older students at their school. Facebook may have a firm grip on it's position.

The Facebook Platform is the company's first big move to leverage their enviable "social graph". If the applications integrate well they could add value to users and attract more developer partners. But if the applications don't fit with the sites clean and simple user experience, then users may revolt. A point we heard repeatedly from Facebook users at the Teen Tech seminar is their preference for Facebook's "Apple-esque" style as opposed to the cluttered and ugly MySpace look.

So this makes we wonder, how insistently will Facebook enforce a clean and attractive user experience with it's partners? We all know Apple accomplishes this because Steve Jobs is the one to say "That's crap, do it again" if something doesn't meet Apple's high standard for style and simplicity. On the other hand, Microsoft's Media Center interface could be an example of what to avoid: weak developer APIs and guidelines yield cheesy and useless third-party apps.

Perhaps Facebook will succeed in smoothly integrating these applications by working closely with the partners versus what we've seen from MySpace. As M. Arrington at TechCrunch said:

Facebook has one thing going for it: partners are probably very motivated not to mess this up. Open APIs plus motivated developers could equal some very cool social technology innovation. Let's keep an eye on this one.

Tags: Facebook, Social Media, Social Technology, Facebook Platform, HP, HP Labs