Following in the footsteps of other popular events that have shifted to providing a free version of their event, Facebook has decided to stream all f8 talks later this month for free via the f8 Facebook Page. Facebook has also decided to partner with Livestream, instead of uStream, to stream the entire event. Livestream has a tool for embedding live events directly within Facebook Pages among other things.

If you didn’t happen to get a ticket to this year’s event because it sold out too quickly, now you’ll be able to attend the event virtually. While the biggest opportunity is to network with other developers, you won’t want to miss out on this year’s announcements which are sure to be significant. If you want to access the event, you can do so via the f8 Facebook Page.

The publisher is rapidly becoming the central tool for publishing information through Facebook to the feed, with events being the latest product to integrate the feature. This evening Facebook began rolling out an upgraded version of events which places a publisher directly within the wall, enabling event administrators to publish content with tags. We believe that all confirmed attendees will also see the content within their stream.

Up until now, all events could only reach out to users via messages to the users’ inboxes, and anytime a wall post was made, there wasn’t any sort of notification. By integrating a stream directly into the wall, it enables events to have more of a conversation before, during, and after an event. While it may not be a complete redesign of the Facebook Events product, it is a significant upgrade.

Despite Facebook refraining from publicly announcing the product roadmap for events, my guess is that the functionality (and design) will slowly begin to mimic Facebook Pages. The idea is that Facebook is becoming a platform which enables users to socialize around various objects: events, pages, groups, photos, videos, applications, and friends. How this socialization takes place is relatively consistent from product to product.

Whether it’s a wall with comments and likes, or tabs that provide extended functionality, Facebook is aiming to be the product which enables anybody to instantly socialize anything. It’s a broad vision but it’s pretty clear that the products are all evolving in this direction, with this upgrade being one step along the path. We’ve reached out to Facebook for confirmation about the event integration with the stream and will be sure to update when we hear more.

Thanks to Mari Smith for the tip.

Last July we began wondering if Facebook would start competing with Eventbrite with the integration of Credits and the company’s Events product. Today it appears that the company has decided to partner with Eventbrite. Given that Facebook is “larger than Evite”, this partnership could prove to be extremely lucrative.

While Facebook decided to use Eventbrite to sell tickets to their upcoming f8 conference, a screenshot of the event registration page, which was accidentally published early, showed a new integration which required attendees to use Facebook Connect in order to purchase a ticket. This integration could be part of a broader integration in which Eventbrite uses Facebook as the sole identity provider for all attendees.

While Eventbrite previously implemented Facebook Connect in order to let attendees publish events they have RSVPed to on the site, this is a much more significant integration. The details of the new integration have not been published, but the screenshot below, initially published on Techcrunch, makes the partnership pretty obvious.

My guess is that the partnership announcement will coincide with the launch of f8 ticket sales. Regardless of what the two companies announce, it’s clear that this will be a big announcement given the size of Facebook Events.

Today Facebook is announcing the date of next year’s f8 conference: April 21-22. As before, the event will be held in San Francisco, however not all the details have been disclosed. We’re expecting Facebook to roll out their Credits platform in full to developers at that point as well as launch the Open Graph API, first discussed at the recent Facebook Developer Garage in Palo Alto.

The f8 event has always been an opportunity to Facebook release their new products for developers. At the last f8 event in San Francisco, Facebook announced Facebook Connect and the initial partners. The Connect platform wasn’t fully available for developers though until later in the year. This time around, I’d expect that Facebook will want to have full functional APIs that developers can begin launching services with immediately.

The first f8 event marked the beginning of the Facebook platform over two and a half years ago. Years later, there are hundreds of thousands of applications on the Facebook Platform and Connect now reaches over 60 million users each month. In short, f8 is a big day for Facebook to showcase their latest developer products and we have big expectations of the coming f8 event on April 21-22, 2010.

MySpace and The Wall Street Journal will be sending one MySpace user to the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2010 in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland as a “Citizen Journalist“.

The “MySpace Citizen Journalist” winner, chosen by a panel of experts, will join the Davos press corps and leverage the MySpace platform to report on conference news and interview world leaders about issues relevant to the global MySpace community. This year MySpace will expand the contestant pool and accept entries from users in the United States and the United Kingdom.

“Recognizing the continued influence of social media, the World Economic Forum has extended a call to action to our online community at MySpace. This year’s theme, ‘Improve the State of the World: Rethink, Redesign, and Rebuild,’ represents the diversity of voices at Davos, and we are thrilled that MySpace users can play such a large part,” said Adrian Monck, Head of Communications of the World Economic Forum.

The “MySpace Citizen Journalist” competition encourages users in the US and the UK to upload a video at “MySpace Journal” explaining why they should be chosen to travel to Davos and represent the global MySpace community as the special correspondent.

A panel of expert judges including Robert Thomson (Managing Editor of The Wall Street Journal), Adrian Monck (Managing Director and Head of Communications of the World Economic Forum), Owen Van Natta (CEO of MySpace), Rebekah Brooks (CEO of News International) and Rebecca McQuigg (2009 winner of “MySpace Journal” contest) will select the winner while the MySpace community rates their favorite submissions.

Applicants must explain why they deserve to report from the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting in Davos as well as answer one of the below questions:

• Name two issues – one global and one local – in which you’ve been actively engaged over the past year. What have they taught you about your impact in the world?
• Which country caught your attention most this year? What are the primary issues facing its citizens and how would you resolve them?
• What pressing global issue has been underreported? Why is the international community neglecting the topic? How would you draw attention to mobilize support?

“MySpace Citizen Journalist” winner will receive:

• All expenses paid travel to/from Davos, Switzerland
• Invitations to the Young Global Leaders opening conference and various media events
• Attendance at private meetings with editors from The Wall Street Journal and News Corp executives
• The opportunity to document the experience in written and video blogs on MySpace and The Wall Street Journal online
• Syndication of their MySpace blog via WSJ.com