Facebook developer George Lee threw down the guantlet at F8 today by saying that he wants each of its 800 million users to have a relationship with at least one developer and that relationship should be focused on content.
“Every single user who is on Facebook should have some relationship with some developer that creates distribution,” said Lee.
Lee said that the focus of Facebook’s growth with the new Open Graph interface will in be in distribution focused on developer-user relationships. Development must be centered on understanding identity and the process users are going to be undergoing in understanding their identity in the new system.
In other words, developers should be focused on creating apps that help people know themselves better, which might have a profound effect on how apps are traditionally developed. In a way, apps are the new brands and developers are the new brand managers.
Lee explained how apps should be talking about “the intention of what the user wants to share.” This is completely about the media, like music shared in Spotify, where people find meaning in their lives.
“You are an extension of something they want to already share, but they just want to do it in a more structured and interesting way,” said Lee.
Li said that he didn’t think it was an “ilegitimate goal” to make sure that all 800 million people on the social network will have a fundamentally human and “healthy” relationship with the work being done by developers.
