I spent last Thursday at the Facebook Platform launch demonstrating an application we developed to integrate with the latest release of Facebook. The new release allows third party applications to integrate with Facebook in an extensive way. They’ve done a great job and I expect that this will open a new market for some very interesting and likely popular applications.

The thing that I found most interesting, however, was the hype and nearly manic buzz-speak. One buzzword I heard repeated again and again was “monetize.” The best I can tell this word is used by those who aren’t making money to refer to ways that someone might make money. It seems to be loaded with the fleeting hope that new web startups have of actually making a profit. To use it in context say something like, “How is this site monetized?” Or, “Please, please, please monetize us.”

Another term, which seems to reflect an outsiders view of social connections, is the “Social graph.” I think it is the term that those who have no relationships use to refer to the concept of relationships. Facebook exposes this social graph. To some at the convention this is a new concept; people know people who in turn know other people. If you’re lucky, you can monetize it.