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The Facebook developer conference took place in Berlin, where Scott Rafer referred to Facebook as having a dead platform. Okay, so what does he have to back his statement? Lets take a look. He brought forward statistics where he also tagged Facebook widgets as dead. Statistics from Quantcast also suggest that publisher traffic on Facebook has gone down by half, since the new site design came in the picture.

I for one am an avid user of social network sites, as they connect me with my friends and I don’t have to bother sending too many (read: any) emails anymore. But with this certain upgrade, I have heard outcries of almost everyone disliking the new look, and policies of the apps. Though most of the suffering would have to be taken by the developers, of course.

Scott’s solution to this issue: Leave the platform and jump on the Facebook Connect opportunity. This claim is backed by the theory that benefits gained from the integration with Connect will be short term, just as they were with the Facebook platform. So to increase the success factor with Facebook Connect, he suggests ganging up with other Connect apps.

The bottom line is you’re better off getting back to the basics: focusing on off-platform activities such as SEO. Though Rafer’s conclusions are his own, there are still numerous applications that continue to profit despite a platform redesign. Though the point of Facebook Connect presenting a great opportunity for developers however, is rightly put.

Check out the gallery below for more insight into the Facebook developer conference: