F8 2011: Facebook's 7 Biggest Announcements From The Event

On Thursday, Facebook announced sweeping changes at F8, their annual developers conference. The event was held in San Francisco and featured comedy, surprise announcements and a poignant video of a Facebooker growing up before our eyes.

Comedian Andy Samberg kicked off the event with his best impersonation of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who followed the performance with a keynote that introduced a ton of new Facebook features--from a revamped profile to new ways to share content. Add all that to the addition of the Ticker module and revamped News Feed announced earlier in the week, and Facebook just got a huge facelift.

Check out the biggest changes announced at f8 (below), and view our guide to understanding the new Facebook profile (here). For blow-by-blow coverage of the event as it happened, visit live blog from the conference.

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Comments

[vexandstress]

11:44 PM on 09/24/2011

I'm not a big fan of Facebook now, and the idea of having my life "scrapbooked" is a little creepy. I realize there are settings and permissions people can implement to remove the stalking factor, but it seems like all this should be an option from the outset and not require an extra step. It's getting to the point where our lives are entirely recreated on Facebook instead of just shared.

[Linda Burton Pike]

05:09 PM on 09/24/2011

Facebook, you're not near as smart as you think you are. Your algorithms for deciding what I want to see, who I want to talk to or what I think is important are 99.999% of the time the exact polar opposite of what I want. Everything you do to try to simplify things only complicates things more. Every attempt you make to improve things inevitably ends up in a HUGE step backwards. Take for example the new way Facebook displays pictures when clicked on that now appear initially as a compressed blurry mess reminiscent of the internet circa 1990. Something as simple as a Friend Request is now just a headache of options. The chat, instead of just showing everybody that's online now is broken up into segments that YOU GUESS I want to talk to, more often than not displaying many that I rarely want to chat with and many that aren't even online. Do I have the option to just display everyone that IS online? Nope, because as history has taught us Facebook isn't about viewing or doing things that I want, it's about Facebook coming up with some ludicrous idea of how things "should" be and than ramming it down it's users throats. I echo the sentiments of others that have cited that it is this kind of mentality that killed MySpace, a reminder that Facebook should never consider themselves "too big to fail." You're not... Repost if you agree, I did.

[crstimuli]

04:56 AM on 09/24/2011

Uhhh....Huff Po. where's my first comment about Facebook? It didn't violate anything & you posted my second one before my first one which I don't even see. Hmmmm.....sketchy!

[crstimuli]

04:54 AM on 09/24/2011

Facebook takes away the humanity in personal relationships. It becomes a digital relationship! Instead of calling your friend & saying "Hey come over & see my new dog, we'll have some lunch, talk & catch up." Now it’s become posting a picture of the new dog & saying "Hey look at the picture of my new dog." You're becoming "Cattle behind computers"

[drpieter]

05:47 AM on 09/24/2011

That is true to a certain extent but you are oversimplifying things or probably live in a small town where your circle of acquaintances lives within a few miles of you.Most people cant exactly fly across the country on a whim just to see their brother's new dog, rabbit or child . Even though I dont have FB I can see a need for social networks such as FB. FB just screws it up in the execution.

[crstimuli]

06:46 AM on 09/24/2011

Actually I live in a large city. All of my family live far away from where I do. We do emails....not a running stream of what everyone is doing from minute to minute on Facebook.

For arguments sake though, that was my point that people would rather sit behind a chair & on a computer than getting out of the house to see someone that is in their local area.

My point of reference is that car commercial where the young girl is on her computer with 600+ friends & she got her parents on Facebook who only have 12 friends & wonders what all they could possilby being doing without her. They're out riding bikes, going out to dinner....etc. with their friends. At the end of the commercial she's still on her computer and says "look at that picture of my friends dog....that's not a real dog."

I think you missed my point but thanks for the reply.

[Linda Burton Pike]

05:43 PM on 09/24/2011

FB lets me stay involved in my childrens day to day lives as my daughter lives in Cali and my son in Ohio....while I sit here in Florida wishing I could be in both places with them. I am not happy about the changesFB have been doing and more to come... that is what happened with myspace. no cattle here, just a mom that has a wonderfully enriched relationship with her kids that I am extremely grateful for,

[ckinsobe]

09:54 PM on 09/23/2011

I have no interest in FB becoming too time consuming and complicated to use. I enkoy the simplicity and do not need all these new tweaks. A few months ago they made a terrible change to messages where ALL past messages show up between you and another person even if they are super old. Who needs to see old stuff, its over with... Another annoying change is that I now get invitations that I have ZERO interest in in my updates, whereas before updates were for post I had expressed an interest in and not all this suprefluous stuff. The new mini-feed is of no interest to me either. I wish FB would lay off the constant tweaking.

[b13thomas]

08:38 PM on 09/23/2011

I guess these changes are great for people who's major preoccupation is collecting friends, but I just check in his a couple hundred friends and family members...this stuff really isn't for me. Of course, Zuckster is going to make billions selling our info. The CIA could get a more complete folder on us

[eric14]

06:00 PM on 09/23/2011

Looks like an endless walk through a mall. Maybe it's a zombie thing I'm missing.

[sdmartintc]

02:19 PM on 09/23/2011

Why try to fix something that was never broken? These changes are going to drive many away from Facebook and it will share the same fate as MySpace. They have made changes without the input of Facebook users. The Facebook honchos have made it so broken that it is no longer functional.

[Ayesha Khan]

02:02 PM on 09/23/2011

I thought that the main idea behind creating Face Book was to connect People, but now Face Book is more like a News Forum or a Magazine that promotes peoples products. People don't communicate with each other as they are so confused with the Avalanche of News and other people Products. Now it feels as if Face Book is nothing more than ---click the LIKE option. And that's the only option one is left with..It was extremely humiliating to see that without my consent so many people were listed under Subscribe, which if in my control i wouldn't even consider them a Kick on their Bu**---- And if Face Book try to justify that users have the options to turn off the Subscribe, then no one has any interested in just fixing the new setting after every week.

[gx5000]

03:03 PM on 09/23/2011

"main idea behind creating Face Book was to connect"

Actually to Collect (information on people) rather than connect.

[Sheena2012]

01:55 PM on 09/23/2011

Yeah facebook sucks now I hate it PLEASE change it back...

[kindamara]

01:39 PM on 09/23/2011

Personally, I do very little on FB. I resent Mr. Zuckerberg choosing what he thinks I'm interested in. Since this current change I am getting slammed with messages from people I don't know. I had never had that problem before. So my solutions is to mark all of these messages as Spam and let FB deal with it. Seems that the FB "gods" did something to my privacy controls.

[Edward D]

12:58 PM on 09/23/2011

Looks like he is trying to be Steve Jobs when Apple announces their latest innovations. Except Jobs had a clue about what people wanted, and stove to make computing more easier, not more complicated. Looks like FB is trying to expand its brand and services by associating with other brands to the detriment of its client base in making thier world more and not less complicated.

[ifyouseekay]

12:46 PM on 09/23/2011

can this thing please go away!

[Tree S-B]

12:39 PM on 09/23/2011

I like Facebook and I like Mark Zuckerberg and I'm very tired of people whining about their loss of privacy when they hold the keys to unlock that door.
Use it or don't use it, it's not a big deal.

[frisco8112]

01:38 PM on 09/23/2011

I'm having problems USING Facebook now. Privacy isn't the issue (this time). I enjoy taking a huge step backward, and having to email everything now.

[Tree S-B]

01:43 PM on 09/23/2011

Yeah, it's a pain. I agree with you.
By the way, I love your profile pics! I just adore Shelties.

[frisco8112]

12:38 PM on 09/23/2011

Makes it easier to share? Everything I try to share goes only in my Profile section. I have to go to friends Profile page to see what they are up to. Used Google Chrome's app yesterday, and it changed some of FB back to how it used to be. Guess what we all done due to our frustration -USE EMAIL! You have taken a site that was easy to use, and made it impossible. One giant leap backward for Facebook.