At Facebook's core is the social graph: people and the connections they have to everything they care about. Historically, Facebook has managed this graph and has expanded it over time as we launch new products (ex: photos, places).  The graph has now been extended to include arbitrary actions and objects created by third-party apps, enabling these apps to integrate deeply into the Facebook experience.  This talk will focus on the motivations behind and technical details surrounding Facebook's Open Graph product.

Alex attended UW-Madison as CS and ECE double major, starting in fall of 2007. He interviewed with Facebook after one of the "hackathons" on campus, and accepted a summer internship position.  After leaving school, he returned to Facebook as a fulltime software engineer.  As a student, he co-founded 

 (formerly badgerbites.com), a local online food-ordering technology.  The company (now officially named  UConnect 

) is going strong and has expanded to 13 cities throughout the country.