Coverage from San Francisco & New York City with Mike Stiles, Chad Bartels, Reza Parang, Brian Culler, Kurt Uhlir, Elliott Wood,  Steve Barnes, and Corbin Kappler. See the LIVE Blog recaps.

Facebook F8 in SF

Vitrue had the social and digital worlds covered coast-to-coast today, with our personnel in attendance at both the Facebook F8 Developer’s conference in San Francisco, and at DigiDay in NYC.  And because we’re everywhere social marketing news is breaking, that means we’re able to provide you with this convenient summary of key points and themes gleaned from each event.  Given how much and how often social media changes, reporters like us are a handy thing to have.  You know…in lieu of a huge travel budget so you can go to everything personally.

Facebook F8 Developers Conference:

• -The last 5 years have mostly been about getting people connected.  Recently, for the first time ever in a single day, half a billion people used Facebook.  Now, it’s going to be about the apps.
• -Facebook is debuting what they call “Timeline,” the curated story of your life.  It will contain all your stories, all your apps & activities, your photos, videos, all divided up by years.
• -Adding content to the Timeline is easy, and you can isolate content to see specific kinds of content on people’s Timelines.
• -Timeline will feature a large cover photo at the top.  Change it whenever you want.  “Starring” tells Timeline what’s important to you.  All content can be set to be visible to whomever you want.  Everything Timeline-related is optimized to look and work great on mobile. You can sign up for the Facebook Timeline Beta here.
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  Mark Zuckerberg on stage at F8

  -Apps can feed the Timeline with an almost limitless amount of information.  Consequently, you’ll be able to pull up reports on your own activities.

• -Apps will be easy to discover.  Hover over a friend’s app and easily add it to your Timeline if you like it.
• -Once you give an app initial permission and settings (which you can always change), the app and your Timeline are in sync with no further permissioning needed.  This creates a frictionless experience.
• -Open Graph will now allow you to connect to anything you want, any way you want.  You don’t have to “Like” a book, you can just read it.  You don’t have to “Like” a movie, you can just watch it.  Everything you do, you “Like” just by doing it.
• -This evolution of Open Graph will allow new kinds of apps and more accessibility to all types of industries.  First up is media.
• -You see in the Ticker that a friend is listening to a song.  You can listen to it inline and in sync with them.  You can chat with them about it.  You can also see trends in their music listening, a summary of their favorites, etc. which is great for music discovery.
• -Daniel Ek, CEO of Spotify, says Spotify users on Facebook listen to more music and a wider variety of music.  They’re actively engaged in music discovery and twice as likely to pay for music.  He believes Spotify + Facebook = artists being fairly compensated for their work.
• -Open Graph is great for discovering TV shows and movies as well based on friends’ activity.  Hulu has built a new social canvas app where content is watched socially.
• -Reed Hastings of Netflix says the viewing of friends is a motivator that trumps most other factors as to why people watch a particular movie or show.  He expects there to soon be total Facebook/Netflix integration.
• -Yahoo will use Open Graph so you can discover more news stories based on what your friends are reading.  For real time breaking news, you can keep an eye on what your friends are reading as revealed in the Ticker.  Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg thinks this has the potential to change the entire news industry.
• -Open Graph will also help you discover more games you’ll want to play with your friends.
• -Lifestyle apps will help you keep track of things like your exercise, eating, travel, fashion, etc.
• -Bret Taylor, Facebook’s CTO points out that once you give an app permission, there’s no need to share, or “Like” individual content.  The app makes everything you do social automatically.
• -Developers will want to make their app look great visually, because the Timeline is very visual.
• -All developers need to do is incorporate an “add to Timeline” button on their app, and it works seamlessly across all devices.  Developers will be able to optimize their app in real time, based on feedback and data from real users.
• -Graph Rank’s job is to find out what activity will be of the most interest to a user.
• -The Timeline beta starts now, with a full rollout happening over the next few weeks.  For Open Graph, you can add new apps as Timeline rolls out over the next few weeks.  But media apps can launch now.

Vitrue at DigiDay Social in NYC

Nuggets from DigiDay NYC:

• -Vitrue’s Reggie Bradford proclaims that Facebook is becoming the operating system of the Internet.
• -Weber Shandwick’s Stephanie Agresta says brands that have millions of fans on Facebook have probably done some paid media to help get them there.
• -Deep Focus’ Ian Schafer says sponsored stories on Facebook are potentially one of the greatest ad innovations in years.
• -Bradford says Facebook news feed optimization is becoming hugely important to brand marketers.
• -Schafer says word-smithing has never been as important as it is today.  Agresta adds, “It’s about storytelling and capturing the hearts and minds of your consumers.”
• -ESPN’s Carol Kruse says shared viewing on Google+ is very interesting to them for its group viewing potential.
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  DigiDay in Action 2011

  -Virgin America’s Porter Gale says, “If I see our number 1 influencer tweeting, I’m much more likely to respond on personal level.”

• -Rishad Tobaccowala thinks Facebook is increasingly a content distribution network, not a social one.  He thinks video is going to be very important to tell stories, and that if brands don’t show their human side, no one will follow them in social media.
• -SB Nation CEO Jim Bankoff declares, “The concept of a website is outdated.”
• -PepsiCo’s Shiv Singh points out that brands must compete against 30 billion status updates, 200 million tweets, and 5.3 billion video ads.  He says content studios should be created to execute real time marketing.
• -Singh: Traditional marketing uses consumer insight that’s 9 months old.  Strategy to execution should be about 9 minutes.

Vitrue will continue to get searched by security at airports all over the world to be where you need us to be.  We truly appreciate how many of you rely on us for thought leadership and to keep you ahead of the social marketing curve.