Zuckerberg: Facebook will expand across platforms

Facebook's future expansion will be through building platforms for developers, from the gaming, news, music, movie and other industries, Mark Zuckerberg, the social network's 27-year-old founder and CEO, told the e-G8 Summit in Paris today.

Going forward, Facebook will continue to focus on its core competencies of social media and technology, and will be inclusive of technologies from specialised companies in the bespoke industries that can build games and interactive content for Facebook's platforms.

"We get software development and social dynamics," he said. "We focus on building really good experiences for these things."

Zuckerberg credited the meteoric rise to 500 million users worldwide to its focus on users' transparent connectivity with friends and families, while other social media sites may operate under the guise of secrecy.

"The magic formula is sharing with friends and family. The basis of being grounded in reality makes us popular," he said. "A lot of other social media sites don't focus on who you are."

Facebook users' recommendations about restaurants, consumer goods, movies and more carry a lot of credibility with their family and friends, he said. This has caused a change in the way people consume movies, books.

"The biggest thing is that ideally, transparency ensures that the best things win. It's a more fair ecosystem than before."

The inevitable questions about privacy issues related to data gathering by Facebook were also discussed.

Zuckerberg told the audience that: "I think people choose their own boundaries. Some share a huge amounts and some not so much. Maybe some share privately. This is the balance. Some share photo albums. Others share where they are."