Facebook is holding its 4th annual developers conference, called f8, this week. It's an opportunity for Facebook to announce new additions to its developer platform. SplashCast was one of the original 35 beta developers for the initial launch of the platform in 2007, and I remember Dave Morin (Product Manager for the FB Platform) pitching me: "this is going to be a big game-changer for the web." History has certainly proven him right!

I have a sense that the features Facebook is announcing this year will be equally game-changing. Here is a NYT article highlighting the expected announcements. 

On the surface, the new stuff might look fairly mundane: a Facebook "Like" button and a chat bar (a la Meebo) that web publishers can put on their sites, allowing Facebook users to favorite sites and chat with their friends (and other FB users?) who are also on the site at that moment.

Below the surface, however, this chat bar functionality is a very powerful, strategic move by Facebook. By placing this "cool-to-have" chat feature on a web site, the site publisher will be giving Facebook a view of who is on the site at any given moment. Because its Facebook, the world's authority on identity (perhaps 2nd only to the CIA), when I say "who" I mean the *actual identities* of the site's visitors.

That's very powerful when you consider the reach that Facebook has: 400 million users, and HALF of the Internet population uses Facebook *every day* according to Nielsen. This means that Facebook would be able to personally identify the majority of visitors on a given web site. Facebook would know so much about each visitor: precise demographic, precise geographic location, likes / dislikes around content, brands, entertainment, selected web browsing history, etc.

This is insight that Google can only dream of.

Facebook would be able to serve ads tailored tightly to the individual person on a site. Facebook ads would target "people profiles", rather than "content profiles", how traditional ad networks like Google AdSense work. AdSense relies on content as a proxy for what ads are relevant to a person. Facebook could eliminate that "hit-or-miss" proxy, knowing much more accurately what is relevant to the site visitor. If this works, it could quickly erode Google's position in the ad market.

And this is exactly the fuel that Facebook needs as it ramps up for an IPO in the next 18 months.

But it all starts with knowing PRESENCE on 3rd party web sites, which is what will be introduced this week by Mark Zuckerberg at the f8 conference.