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Wow! Its been a very big day in Social Media. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ll know today was the F8 developer conference for Facebook. This is Mark Z’s annual developer announcement & keynote, for new features and development for the Facebook platform.

I’m actually sitting here at the moment, watching it streamed live via Livestream (a very good service by the way, check out the iPhone app) and I have some thoughts!

Firstly, lets get it clear that a lot of people are going to hate the new radically different redesign of the profile page & layout. Gone are the Blue on white, with boxed content, and we’re now moving more into a personal webpage style interface layout which I think looks great.

Mark get’s Social Media (of course) and I know he doesnt expect everyone to live fully within the Facebook eco-system, but Facebook is rather the digital mortar, the backbone to link everyone on the planet. Through research, its definetley a fact that as people, we’re completley social online, and the way we communicate via social apps & platforms such as facebook wont ever change now, its too ingrained in our culture. He knows users will log into Facebook, but then branch out their activities into various Apps and realtime social widgets outside of Facebook, so consider the new Facebook & actually the evolution of Facebook, as a backbone connection. A single sign on portal if you will, to aggegrate all your life, in one place.

The features are pretty interesting, Timeline was mentioned first, and the ‘by era’ interface, along with the new profile picture & tighter cohesion of timeline feeds is a great look. Very viceral, and looks great on mobiles too.

Then there’s OpenGraph, allowing social apps tighter integration into content such as what we like, what we watch & what we listen to. So for example, frictionless experiences, real time serendipity all make the experience of Facebook richer. ’like’s have been improved with the use of  ’verbs’ allowing us to share more, the addition of verbs as opposed to just ‘like’ means we’re far more likley to connect on different levels, and Social apps will take advantage of that.

Its good to see dynamic and interactive apps like Hulu, Netflix and Spotify hooking tightly into Facebook, and we can now watch what our friends are watching, listen to what our friends are listening to, just by hovering over the content within a profile. I really think as more & more companies come on board with OpenGraph (and many have it looks like) it’ll be an awesome way of self expressing everything your into, in realtime with your friends.

The tickers great, and whilst people whine & moan that its trying to be Twitter, its simply not, its just a neat way of aggregating massive amounts of content in a simple way. And because it does look like Twitter, we’re used to that layout. Its really helpful.

I like sharing my content, my Mountain bike rides, my cookery, my career, and its all seemingly easier now with OpenGraph. I hope all the new backend changes to the development platform dont affect my existing pages, for that of my personal fan pages & my company fan pages, but overall I’m a big fan of the changes.

I do wish Mark Z would get some media coaching though – its still achingly tough to watch him talk on stage!

watch it here

There are several people in my professional peer group that I’ve always looked up to. The people who you know hand on heart are simply better than you. They are the people you want to be, the people who do things better, faster, slicker, and seemingly with more success. I’ve always modelled myself on these people who I’ve been fortunate enough to know, and who have given me their time, and for that I’ll always be thankful.

In a world when standards are slipping, ‘just ok’ is acceptable, and passion jumped out the window back in the 90’s with responsibility clinging to it for dear life, I am even more certain that the people I want around me, need to be the best. I’ve blogged before about doing a good job for a good jobs sake (here), and the money, fame & glory will come. Even
if it doesn’t, don’t worry, just do a good job out of pride.

Business leaders, owners and CEO’s continue to have fear of change, failure to engage & sheer lack of commitment in some circumstances in understanding that setting up a business several years ago, is different to how it works now.

People are different, Y generation work smarter, longer and are plugged in more (see my article on this here), client attitudes are different, people want more for less, but they want it personable, and served up on a plate of happy with a side of passion. Even the technologies changed, service wrapping already hosted infrastructure that’s cheap, reliable and cost-effective. Tech companies can’t add value there really, where they can add value is being the ‘go to’ guy for advice, guidance & consultancy.

When it comes to getting your hands dirty, great, do it loud, do it proud. Mistakes happen, but no one wants an excuse.

Its excuses that get me, everyone’s got an excuse to not go to the gym, not get that salary increase, not get that job, but you can blame your boss, blame your company, and blame everyone else but the key is looking in the mirror at that chubby face staring back and realise,

its only you that can make a difference.