Thrudigital

With all of the announcements that have come out of the f8 conference, the one impression I am left with is that although Facebook might now be an internet juggernaut, it has not grown out of the ability to iterate quickly with new products. The volume of Facebook’s product changes are huge and incredibly important, and they step on some not inconsiderable toes.

Foursquare / Gowalla

Facebook has long been the gorilla in the location-based-networking room. Although it hasn’t previously done much, its near ubiquity means that it can leapfrog any other competitor with ease. Now Facebook has announced its first major plans in this space. And they are dramatic. Rather than simply the cellphone app (bottom-up) approach of Gowalla and Foursquare, Facebook is using RFID tags and readers (top-down) to allow check-ins.

Meebo

Meebo is a distributed Instant Messenger service which sees over 100 million uniques per month. Its Meebo Bar can be installed by any site, to allow users to chat in realtime. Its an awesome service. But now Facebook has announced a persistent Facebook toolbar that sites can install to allow users to use Facebook Chat.  Is that game over for Meebo?

Digg / TweetMeme etc

The social bookmarking space has a lot of strong players, with multiple buttons displayed by most news stories. Although each service has a loyal fanbase, their seems no reason why Facebook’s new “Like” buttons will not quickly command this area of the market. It has the largest userbase and the strongest social graph, so why wouldn’t you choose to “”Like” articles and pages using Facebook?

Glue (recommendation services)

Beyond a whole host of social bookmarking sites, there are a range of semantically-aware recommendation services, which use toolbars and buttons to allow users to rate products and content. The services, like Glue, then provide recommendations. Facebook’s new “Like” buttons really start to build up rich preference and taste data, which can be mined for user recommendations and for advertising targeting.

Social Gold (virtual currencies)

One of Facbeook’s most awaited announcements was regarding a full virtual currency, called Facebook Credits. This surely seriously undermines existing players such as Social Gold, and also opens up the pathway for Facebook to start eating at Paypal’s sandwich.

Authentication

There is no clear leader in this arena yet, with many services offering authentication, including Twitter. Facebook will basically allow third-party sites to authenticate users by their Facebook cookie, therefore removing the delicate process of notifying the user. This is a very controversial area, and Facebook will certainly have to deal with some backlash. However, they are obviously continuing to bet that the utility and ease will prove greater than the concern.

Any others I have missed?