In town to make friends. The wealthiest 26-year-old in the world has been in London with some of his senior colleagues, trying to extend the hand of friendship. Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, dropped in on David Cameron in Downing Street, then went to meet a gathering of developers, and the odd journalist, at a "developer garage".
So what did we learn? Well first of all, when a young guy in a hoodie and trainers from a company that did not exist six years ago can get access to a prime minister when he drops into town, that's a sign of how rapidly the world is changing. Neither side was saying much about the visit - though the Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt did tweet about it - except that it was about how government can use the internet more to engage with the public.
During the election campaign the Conservatives were enthusiastic users of Facebook, so perhaps we will now see the coalition government making the Budget a Facebook event to which we're all invited - or putting a "Like" button on the Inland Revenue's website.
And the main message that Mark Zuckerberg and his colleagues gave to the developers they met at the Barbican was that this process of taking what the firm calls its social graph right across the web was moving ahead at a pace. Over 300,000 sites have now installed social plug-ins, integrating their users' activities with their Facebook lives, since they were launched in April.
Examples on display at the event included Playfish, the casual games developer which now lets users play games like Fifa Superstars through Facebook, the BBC's new iPlayer which encourages users to tell friends about favourite programmes, and the music-streaming service Spotify, which allows its users to share playlists with their Facebook friends.
Incidentally, Mark Zuckerberg mentioned in his brief address to the developers that he was a big fan of Spotify, which is interesting as the firm has not yet launched in the United States - they're obviously preparing the way with accounts for VIPs.
So a vision was painted of a world brought together by Facebook, to the benefit of users and developers.
In a speech peppered with "awesomes" Mark Zuckerberg told us,"every year that goes by there's just more and more ways of getting information and the world just keeps getting better and better. So it's a really exciting time to be developing."
What we heard little or nothing about was how this added up as a business - for the developers or for Facebook - and you might have thought that everyone was there just to spread the message of peace, love and sharing. The answer is of course that the more "sticky" the social network can be made for users through the exploitation of this social graph, the easier it will be to sell advertising.
What also seemed clear was that Mark Zuckerberg was far more comfortable talking to a crowd of young developers than he would be presenting his company to investment analysts or financial journalists. If Facebook's future includes a stock-market flotation, then he might find he needs to hire someone older, greyer and less likely to wear trainers, to talk balance sheets while he concentrates on the geeky stuff.( bbc.co.uk )
So what did we learn? Well first of all, when a young guy in a hoodie and trainers from a company that did not exist six years ago can get access to a prime minister when he drops into town, that's a sign of how rapidly the world is changing. Neither side was saying much about the visit - though the Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt did tweet about it - except that it was about how government can use the internet more to engage with the public.
During the election campaign the Conservatives were enthusiastic users of Facebook, so perhaps we will now see the coalition government making the Budget a Facebook event to which we're all invited - or putting a "Like" button on the Inland Revenue's website.
And the main message that Mark Zuckerberg and his colleagues gave to the developers they met at the Barbican was that this process of taking what the firm calls its social graph right across the web was moving ahead at a pace. Over 300,000 sites have now installed social plug-ins, integrating their users' activities with their Facebook lives, since they were launched in April.
Examples on display at the event included Playfish, the casual games developer which now lets users play games like Fifa Superstars through Facebook, the BBC's new iPlayer which encourages users to tell friends about favourite programmes, and the music-streaming service Spotify, which allows its users to share playlists with their Facebook friends.
Incidentally, Mark Zuckerberg mentioned in his brief address to the developers that he was a big fan of Spotify, which is interesting as the firm has not yet launched in the United States - they're obviously preparing the way with accounts for VIPs.
So a vision was painted of a world brought together by Facebook, to the benefit of users and developers.
In a speech peppered with "awesomes" Mark Zuckerberg told us,"every year that goes by there's just more and more ways of getting information and the world just keeps getting better and better. So it's a really exciting time to be developing."
What we heard little or nothing about was how this added up as a business - for the developers or for Facebook - and you might have thought that everyone was there just to spread the message of peace, love and sharing. The answer is of course that the more "sticky" the social network can be made for users through the exploitation of this social graph, the easier it will be to sell advertising.
What also seemed clear was that Mark Zuckerberg was far more comfortable talking to a crowd of young developers than he would be presenting his company to investment analysts or financial journalists. If Facebook's future includes a stock-market flotation, then he might find he needs to hire someone older, greyer and less likely to wear trainers, to talk balance sheets while he concentrates on the geeky stuff.( bbc.co.uk )
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