Here at Facebook's developer conference, AKA f8, the big story is all about app discovery. It's a theme many of the major app stores have been struggling with: the Android App Store was recently redesigned, and reports from the Apple front still show that top sellers pretty much take all. But the ways Facebook users find their applications is fundamentally different than the mobile app store scene.
With a mouse in hand and a big browser window to display things on, there are a lot more options here. To that end, Facebook is revamping the whole app discovery experience. They're offering up slick new layouts for their app pages, and giving developers new ways of using media in their applications.
Of course, Facebook has a lot of very specific announcements, which you can find here, here and here. If you're already building Facebook applications, it looks like you're going to have a lot more tools to make them viral and social.
As a conference, this is quite a shwank affair. While Google I/O still holds the prize for most generous event, f8 is probably the slickest conference I've seen in years. It's held in the San Francisco Design Center, a warehouse-like wood and rafters affair, where TechCrunch likes to hold its events. But while TechCrunch's events are typically about cocktail wieners and tiny demo stalls, f8 is about cool technology being incidentally used in conjunction with the show.
Other events where you tap your badge to show you've visited a booth are frustrating: you swipe your badge ons some cheap old Palm Pilot-like device, and repeat the process until the ancient device beeps. Here, your badge is a small book, and a simple tap on any of the proximity sensors seems sufficient to trigger that particular app. And these check-in apps aren't just to show you've been here.
Because your badge is tied to your Facebook account, tapping it below a camera setup in the lobby here, automatically takes a photo of you and puts it on your Facebook page. Nearby, you tap you badge and step under a projector, where your friend graph is shown as a circle around your feet. Any people you have in common with another user using this display are shown as links between your circle and theirs. And the circles follow you as you walk around.
This is the sort of really interesting technology demo that hits home. Most other shows have displays with a handler showing off their beta-projects. Here, everything feels polished and ready for prime time. And it doesn't hurt that the overall vibe here is one of a Hollywood premiere, or cool after-hours party, rather than a geeky dev show.