Facebook's Second F8 Developer Conference Announced. How Will They Top Last Year's Facebook Platform Launch?

Facebook announced its second F8 Developer event earlier today, to be held in San Francisco on July 23, 2008.

It’ll be hard for them to top last year’s announcement of Facebook Platform at the first F8 event. Facebook Platform transformed the idea of social networking from an activity to a platform to engage users. MySpace’s Platform, Google Open Social, and even Yahoo’s new feel-good social strategy can all be linked back to that single event.

What will Facebook launch this year? I don’t know yet, but look for them to expand their open source offering, push the new profile product, and, I’m sure, have at least one new major announcement. There may even be a little celebrating over their new status as the largest social network in the world.

Update: We’ve been informed that Senior Platform Manager Dave Morin has said Facebook will launch Facebook Connect at F8 this year, although this has yet to be confirmed by the company. Its launch would certainly make sense given its intention to essentially extend the app platform into the broader web. Facebook may very well have been saving the initial announcement of Connect for F8 until MySpace surprised them.