Social From the Ground Up

At Facebook, we are huge believers in what a small dedicated team with a unique perspective can accomplish. We’ve already seen how a group of startups who built social interactions into the core of their product experience have completely changed how people play games online, and we think what has happened in the games market is just the beginning.

As part of our ongoing efforts to engage with developers, we’re partnering with Y Combinator -- an early stage venture firm -- to help encourage and support startups who want to build their business around a social experience. Y Combinator has already invested in companies at the forefront of new social experiences such as Scribd, Justin.tv and Divvyshot, a photo company we recently acquired.

We’ll provide product, technical and design resources to support new Y Combinator companies interested in working with us to build deeply social products, whether a website or an application on Facebook.com. These companies will have priority access to our technologies and programs such as Facebook Credits, Instant Personalization and upcoming beta features. Y Combinator will be publishing a “Request for Startup” focused on social startups and is now looking for interested entrepreneurs for their winter 2011 funding cycle.

In the near future, we think it will be hard to imagine a web experience that is not personalized. Startups that can build in these interactions from the beginning -- not simply add them to existing products -- will be the examples of transformative social experiences others will follow.

Carl, who leads the Platform product team, is excited to see some great new social applications.