Facebook: Honestly, How Useful Are The New Features?

Story Correction: It turns out that anyone can create widgets on the site using the Facebook Developers section.  I have deleted the portion of the post that was untrue.
As I was watching a streaming video of the Facebook event, F8, I couldn’t help but think that Mark Zuckerberg reminded me of Steve Jobs. Before Zuckerberg entered the stage, there was some hype music playing (Daft Punk’s Around the World for example), and then he started his speech about “Today, together, we’re going to start a movement.” Throw in some buzz keywords that people love hearing and you have just captivated an audience.

It’s like Zuckerberg came up on stage with something that will revolutionize digital music players like an iPod or a Zune, but it was actually an announcement that Facebook will be supporting hand-picked widgets of his choice. That is clearly great news for other companies out there that want more traffic, but does it really matter to the users? Who knows?

While I hope that many other third party companies benefit from such a partnership traffic-wise, I hope that this does not discourage entrepreneurs from thinking, we are just another shadow under Facebook and MySpace. I still think that the next big thing is out there.

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4. Facebook Adds More Profile IM Contact Options
5. Facebook Unleashes Holiday Center