Liveblogging the Facebook Developer Conference

2:44 PM: They have partnerships with partners to help developer (Microsoft), host and scale. They are launching a new developer website that gives all the information needed for a quick start. He says 1000 apps have been submitted to the Facebook fund. They are revealing the names of fbFund's recipients to date: Challenge, ConnectedWeddings, Podclass, MyListo, Trazzler, Zimride, LuckyCal, Coursefeed, Hotberry, and J2Play.

They are announcing a new competition today. $2M will be given out over the next two months. Facebook will select 25 finalists who will each get 25k. Users will vote on finalists who will each get 250k.

2:43 PM: He says they must keep the ecosystem safe for users and fair for developers. A year ago equal distribution became overwhelming to users, then they made restrictive changes that hurt apps. Going forward they will have different rules. They are announcing several programs to help app developers. Get Started Quickly tools like adding easy FBML tags.

2:42 PM: He says that they've learned a lot in the last year, as they've had lots of challenges. Facebook is listening to the community. They're trying to partner more closely with developers. He says they are making organizational changes that let developers incorporate feedback during the dev process, and they're creating full time community management organization

2:40 PM: "Security is a big part of it, apps can't share information with other users unless they obey privacy settings. Apps must also be respectful of the users attention and time. Don't make users invite 20 friends before you use the app, or spam friends without them knowing. Apps must be very transparent. Users should get what they expect when they click, not an interstitial ad. Design is also important - clean design is a must. And apps must be fast loading and responsive. As the apps get faster, users use them more. Apps need to focus on being robust and scaling properly as they grow."

2:39 PM: "Building trustworthy applications is important because we live in an ecosystem with network effects. If users leave, everyone suffers. Apps must be safe and trusted."

2:37 PM: He says apps must be useful. The carpool app is great example, which lets users find carpool buddies. "Apps must also be expressive"- The graffiti app that lets users draw on friends profiles, is a good example. Finally, meaningful apps must be engaging. He says Playfish makes games that are highly engaging. Facebook users have played over 900 million minutes of Playfish games. That's about 1800 years.

2:35 PM: Benjamin is announcing "guiding principles for great applications" which are based on dialog with community. It's based on three pillars: meaningful, trustworthy and well designed. The best apps make use of the social graph. Applications must be social. A good example is the Lil Green Patch app, which helps users fight global warming by interacting with other users.

2:33 PM: Benjamin Ling, Director of Platform Program Management is now on stage talking about the "State of Platform." He says that over $200m has been invested in Facebook apps, $34m this week alone. Additionally, 13 different ad networks have launched that pay out tens of millions of dollars to app developers. He says, "venture capital, ad networks, developers and academics are the ecosystem that makes Facebook platform a success."