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| Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg. Photograph: Craig Ruttle/AP |
Speaking at Facebook's first officially organised European hack day at London's Barbican Centre, Zuckerberg said the growth of social gaming and his own experience using the new version of Spotify illustrated the potential of "products built around people".
"Every industry will go through this wave where there are new versions of apps for those industries built from ground up around people," he said. "There's the opportunity for new wave of developers to be a part of building new software, websites and mobile apps.
"We will look back in a few years when the web is a lot more personalised and wonder how it was ever not that way."
The 26-year-old Zuckerberg, who co-founded Facebook in 2004 and has since seen it grow to have more than 450 million users, pointed to US gaming firm Zynga and its European rival, Playfish, as two early pioneers of social gaming, and to the version of Spotify released in April, which has a swathe of recommendation and sharing features, as examples of services with more engagement because they encourage social connections.
"The new version of Spotify is really pretty amazing – it shifted the experience so now you connect with your Facebook account to see what all your friends are listening to and all the different music they like and subscribe to. It adds a new element on top of the experience and almost makes it a completely different experience. I'm using it so much more," Zuckerberg said.
He said Facebook's success is built in the way it engages people, and pointed to internal research that found users typically navigate the site by the faces of their friends and family: "A huge part of our brain is hard wired to process what is going on around us and how to stay connected to people."
A million developers are now using Facebook's developer tools which add elements of Facebook's functionality, such as the "Like" button, to external sites. Rather than trying to build tools internally to expand the site, Zuckerberg said Facebook's focus is on building out the platform to support external developers.
Christian Hernandez, Facebook's head of international business development, said that 350,000 sites are now using Facebook's social plugins, and that some have reported up to fivefold traffic increases.
Hernandez said: "I would like to see every single website in Europe have integration with Open Graph," adding that "localising" the experience is essential. Open Graph is the hook into Facebook's database which allows more user activity to be integrated onto outside sites.
"We try to find partnerships with brands and concepts relevant to local users," he said. "How do you make it easy for the user to share that content on the site? It creates a very local language and a very local experience, so how do we help media companies or locals gaming companies develop those experiences?"
He acknowledged that Facebook is in the early days of establishing these relationships, but said Europe already accounts for 50% of all "Like" clicks, indicating the plugins are highly popular in Europe compared to other markets. More than 100m "Likes" have been generated on third-party sites since the feature was introduced.
Hernandez also said there are no plans to begin charging for the API, and that Facebook monetises the development platform with advertising around the content it generates.
source : http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/pda/2010/jun/21/facebook-zuckerberg-personalising-the-internet