Next Wednesday is Facebook’s F8 developer conference, and speculation is swirling about what Facebok might announce at the event. Last year, CEO Mark Zuckerberg kicked off the Facebook Platform for Web app developers, which is now its own mini-industry. So what will Facebook announce this year? We’ve suggested that Facebook might take the opportunity to expand its open source offering, new profile product, or launch Facebook Connect. My vote is for a payments system (confirmed in March) so that developers can actually make money.
But those are all known projects, more or less. What could Facebook do to really make a splash, and get some of the attention back that has been flowing to the iPhone and elsewhere?
In a Twitter on Wednesday, Michael said:
I think it’s time to start speculating about what Facebook will be announcing at the F8 conference next week.
Of course, the conversation quickly moved to FriendFeed, where some of the following responses (both silly and serious) were generated. Please add your own speculation in comments (best one gets a TechCrunch T-Shirt). I’ll excerpt a few from that FriendFeed thread to kick things off:
They will be acquiring the Democratic Party. – Todd Brunner via twhirl
better access to messaging infrastructure. – Robert Scoble
They will disable all applications because the find them “too confusing” for the users ;o) – Daniel
The CIA Monitoring API – Todd Brunner via twhirl
What ever it is, you’ll have to install the Announcement Application and invite 20 friends first to find out. – John Worthington
Facebook gets angry at all the iPhone, twitter, and FF attention, attention shifting and drastic plans afoot – Dan Rockwell via twhirl
Mobile platform – simonpure
FB offers whitelabel service – Rebecca Caroe via Alert Thingy
Facebook needs to buy Friendfeed.. or Friendfeed needs to buy Facebook.Whoever got the money, go for it! – Muthu Ramadoss
Further international expansion. – Andrew Feinberg
Personally hoping for jabber interoperability with facebook chat. – Matt Harwood
More design flexibility? Profile pages and page sites and groups can need more color and more individuality options. – Lars Wehmeyer
They’re going to announce that they’re going to copy the functionality of the 5 top applications (after shutting them down for a week of course) ;) – Thomas B via NoiseRiver
An Amnesty Day for disabled accounts due to their overzealousness to disable accts would be highly appreciated & not excessive:) – Roney Smith
Hopefully something to improve their ads, especially those they target at international users (as a Russian I am forced to watch child porn ads, really). But I don’t really hope for it. – Svetlana Gladkova
Is there actually a reason to care? – Brian Sullivan
They’re going to buy yahoo. – Chris Hollander
They’re going to integrate Google Gears into Facebook – Daniel Spisak via twhirl
Facebook is soooooooooooo boring. – Thomas Hawk
bill gates is their newest programmer – acedanger via twhirl
Two possible features: Multi-friend chat and in-house video and voice messages. – John Worthington