“When all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail.” Prior to f8 the only verb we had was “Like” which was widely embraced yet not very expressive. That’s all changed now and we’ve got the entire dictionary at our disposal. We’ve upgraded from a hammer to a toolkit that would make Snap-on jealous.

With this increased ability to express oneself comes an increased expectation of expression. This is going to require richer applications which will be significantly more compelling or as Facebook says “Social By Design”. We can now move beyond simple experiences where all you could do is like an object. We are now going to eat, drink, watch, read, run and ride our way across the social graph.

This year f8 was all about enabling a user to express themselves on a Timeline. It’s beautifully designed and was created with the assistance of Nicholas Felton. The large photo and sliding feels a bit like Path. As you go back in time fewer items are available. Facebook applies algorithms to add significant events to your Timeline. Users are able to add or remove things from their Timeline. They may also control the privacy settings of each item or see the complete list via the “Activity Log”.

Everything is framed around two items: actions and objects. Read a Book, Listen to a Song, Watch a Movie the possibilities are endless. Facebook takes this concept even further by providing “aggregations”. Developers are able to apply grouping, sorting and summing logic to these stories and surface interesting patterns. See what your most read Author is or your most visited City.

All of this expression is made possible by a more “tightly coupled” application. Developers must now expose the data modeling to Facebook and inform Facebook of how to speak about the modeling. By doing so they are providing Facebook with detailed information about the types of data and the relationships. Facebook just increased their data assets tenfold.

We’re about to enter the age of “expressive apps”. Media companies are perfectly positioned to take advantage of these new features since they own the content that users read, watch and listen to. This may also further the development of IOT style engagements so that users can share when they drink a beer, bike to a party or swim laps.