Ryan A Graves.com

As many know Facebook held their annual developers conference yesterday at the San Fransisco Design Center. The agenda (shared below) emphasized three main changes coming to FB: more sharing, simplification, and getting developers more involved. There were a few main sites that will now be much more integrated with Facebook such as Digg and Seesmic! The live blog of that event was covered extremely well over at TechCrunch.

The question that was never answered fully is one that Max Levchin founder of Slide asked, “is Facebook going to create more contracted agreements with app development houses?” I can see why Max would obviously love that as one of the premier app developers. However, I don’t see that as such a great thing for Facebook or the development community as a whole. If Facebook starts entering into contractual relationships with the “big swinging dicks” of app development (Slide, RockYou) then the “little guy” development houses will not be able to participate or continue to  feed the Facebook app community with innovative ideas. Keeping things open and available for anyone has been the strategy for Facebook to grow their development platform since the beginning and judging by the excitement and attendance of yesterdays event it looks likes it has been working quite well!

So Mark, listen, keep the platform open. Give the little guys a chance at “making it big”. There are a lot of great start-ups out there that would love to use the Facebook platform to change the way people use the web but if you cut “deals” with these big dogs of the FB app world the small man is out of the game. Give’m a chance.

*I just saw this morning that my Facebook profile has been updated and wanted to share a small portion of the new look.

Agenda:

12:00 - 1:30 pm: Doors Open

Registration & Exhibitor Area Open

1:30 - 3:00 pm: Keynote, Mark Zuckerberg

3:30 - 4:15 pm: Breakouts Round 1

User Experience: Introducing the New Facebook Profile & More

Technical: Building to Facebook Scale

Business: Building a Business on Facebook

4:30 - 5:15 pm: Breakouts Round 2

User Experience: Integrating Facebook Connect into your Website

Technical: Advanced App Building

Business: Marketing your App on Facebook

Workshop: App Building 101

5:15 - 6:00 pm: Break

6:00 - 6:45 pm: Breakouts Round 3

User Experience: Building Great Applications on Facebook

Technical: Feed & Social Distribution

Business: Entreprenuership on Facebook Platform

7:00 - 7:45 pm: Breakouts Round 4

User Experience: Design & User Experience at Facebook

Technical: Made for Mobile

Business: fbFund - A look inside - Seeding Opportunity on Facebook

Workshop: Taking your Platform Application Global

8:00 - 12:00 am: After 8 Celebration

*Photos courtesy of Brian Solis