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Today at the Inside Social Apps conference in San Francisco, Inside Network’s Justin Smith sat down for a discussion with Facebook CTO Bret Taylor. The two talked about a wide range of issues including the company’s 2010 (when they cut spam by 95 percent, Taylor said). But there was a particular focus on 2011 and the ecosystem. So what’s next for Facebook’s Platform?

Taylor made it very clear that mobile was the big area of focus for the Platform in 2011. But at a higher level Taylor talked a bit about “streamlining things” with regard to all the different ways Facebook is used.

“When we update something, there are about 7 different versions we have to update,” Taylor said. He rattled off a few: facebook.com, m.facebook.com, touch.facebook.com, the iPhone version, the Android version, etc. “It’s an incredible challenge,” he said. “And there’s feature-skew,” he continued.

Taylor noted that this same issue is a big problem for their third-party developers and partners as well. So how do they combat it? HTML5.

Taylor noted that while HTML5 has gotten a lot of hype in Silicon Valley, he does really believe that it’s the long-term answer. He said that Facebook is a bit ahead of the curve currently with over 125 million of their users accessing Facebook regularly from HTML5-compatible devices. “But we’re putting more in,” he said. “We’re getting to the point where it’s becoming a more mature platform,” he continued.

He noted that Facebook is going to release a lot of developer tools in the coming year so that third-parties can utilize HTML5 better as well.

When Smith asked if it was fair to say that Facebook would re-write or re-work things to make everything more standardized around technologies like HTML5, Taylor said, “At a high level, that’s the direction we’re going.”

Taylor credited both Apple and Google for doing great work in pushing HTML5 forward with their web browsers both on the desktop on on mobile. “It’s big for everyone in this room,” he said.

He did acknowledge that HTML5 was still a bit quirky when compared to native applications. “But the gap is closing,” Taylor concluded.

As Yahoo announces its second round of layoffs in two months, Google is announcing that it will be embarking on a hiring spree this year. We first heard this morning from soon to be former CEO Eric Schmidt that the company will be adding 1,000 new employees in Europe. And Google’s SVP Engineering and Research Alan Eustace just published a post on the company’s website announcing that the search giant will ramp up hiring to record levels in 2011.

Eustace writes “I love Google because of our people. It’s inspiring to be part of the team. And that’s why I am excited about 2011—because it will be our biggest hiring year in company history. We’re looking for top talent—across the board and around the globe—and we’ll hire as many smart, creative people as we can to tackle some of the toughest challenges in computer science: like building a web-based operating system from scratch, instantly searching an index of more than 100 million gigabytes and even developing cars that drive themselves.”

In terms of staffing up, 2010 was the second largest year in terms of adding employees. Google hired more than 4,500 Googlers, primarily in engineering and sales. And in 2007, Google brought on more than 6,000 people.

Here are a few stats (most of which seem to have been announced that Eustace cited for Google’s growth:

Android now runs on over 100 devices with more than 300,000 activations each day.

Chrome has at least 120 million active users and it’s growing quickly.

Last year more than 1 million businesses switched to Google Apps and embraced its 100% web approach.

Yahoo announced this morning that it would be giving pink slips to 1 percent of its employee base, which amounts to roughly 100 to 150 staff members.

Here at Inside Mobile Apps conference, Facebook CTO Bret Taylor talked about how mobile will be Facebook’s primary focus in 2011, mainly because “mobile devices are inherently social,” he said. Currently Facebook has 1/3 of its almost 600M user base (200M) on mobile devices and Taylor says that Facebook mobile users are 2x as active as Facebook web users.

Taylor thinks of Facebook as a horizontal platform i.e. easily accessible. One big goal for Facebook is reducing friction on mobile and extending Facebook engagement to all devices, and Taylor brought up the PS3, the iPhone and customized devices (but conspicuously not the iPad) as examples.

As an example of a frictionless solution on mobile, Taylor brought up Facebook Single Sign On and mentioned that social movie site Flixster had a 300% increase in usage after it implemented the feature.

As Facebook has already seen with Facebook Places, Taylor emphasized that the convergence of mobile, local and social is the most interesting locus of growth in the space and a trend to watch as it deeply integrates real life with the social graph.

Facebook, which has the extreme competitive advantage of this social graph, is reportedly working on its own foray into to mobile, as a “social layer” on already existing hardware. “Social as a core part of product will have as great an influence on other verticals as it has on gaming,” Taylor said.

Google has just acquired voice messaging startup SayNow, according to a blog post on SayNow’s homepage.

SayNow’s platform allows voice messaging, one-on-one conversations, and group calls to be integrated into Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Android, or iPhone applications. The startup has built a number of applications, which have over 15 million users, with this capabilities, including SayNow Phone, SayNow Broadcast, Big Call and Chit Chat.

It appears that SayNow, which has raised $7.5 million in funding from Shasta Ventures, Tugboat Ventures, and Altos Ventures, will be combining forces with the Google Voice team.

Here’s the post announcing the acquisition:

We are thrilled to announce that we have been acquired by Google.

Since 2005, we’ve explored fun and entertaining ways for people to talk with each other. Through the web, smartphones, and even land lines, our products brought communities together through the power of voice. And as Google has some of the best voice products in the world, we believe combining forces with the Google Voice team will let us innovate in new and unexplored areas.

We have no specific product plans to announce at this time, but we’ll have more to say about our roadmap as we integrate with Google, so stay tuned. We couldn’t be more excited about what is yet to come.

UPDATING

Today at the Inside Social Apps conference in San Francisco, Inside Network’s Justin Smith sat down with Facebook CTO Bret Taylor. The two talked about a bunch of things going on with the company. But to kick things off, Taylor offered up a bit of an overview about how 2010 went with regard to the Platform.

In 2010, Facebook’s focus was on user experience, Taylor said. He noted that while everything we growing “like gangbusters”, they had to do some things that weren’t taken as purely positive from a developer perspective. One big thing there is obviously the removal of what Facebook considers to be spam. “There was a lot of spam,” Taylor noted. But this past year they were able to cut spam by 95 percent.

Yes, 95 percent.

How did Facebook do this? Thanks to automated systems that Facebook built and put in place throughout the year. Taylor credits this as being the key factor in spam reduction despite the fact that the social network cut the number of Platform policies in half.

“We’re really happy with the 95 percent,” Taylor said noting again that the mixture of helping developers while reducing spam was a key focus for the entire year.

And while he did acknowledge some community push back, he pointed to huge success stories like CityVille, which was able to grow to 100 million users in 40 days despite new systems in place. It took Facebook itself 4 years to get to 100 million users. It took Microsoft 10 years to do that, Taylor noted.

PeopleBrowsr’s recently launched Twitter analytics and search platform ReSearch.ly is debuting a new feature today: the ability to search from 1,000 days of Twitter data.

ReSearch.ly is essentially a high-powered Twitter search and analytics platform that allows users drill down by keyword, demographic, location, and more. ReSearch.ly also sorts Tweets by sentiment, and by community (i.e. Mommy Bloggers, Reporters). For the past four years, PeopleBrowser has indexed Twitter for social search and as mapped social connections, and today is launching the fruit of these efforts.

The startup is opening access to search Twitter conversations from the past 1,000 days free of charge, with options for paid plans to create specialized analysis and customized reports. Of course, the advantage to using ReSearch.ly’s search platform is that Twitter search only goes back 30 days, says the startup’s CEO and founder Jodee Rich. Rich adds that his company has forged a unique agreement with Twitter to access this data.

Of course, Google also offers archived Twitter search but ReSearch.ly’s access to 1,000 days of Twitter data includes extensive capabilities targeted towards marketers and media. Users can filter by keyword, date/time, location and profile information to find highly targeted communities with demographic, psychographic, geo-localized, and time-targeted criteria.

While the search platform is open for free to all users for a limited number of searches, users can pay a yearly $99 fee for unlimited access to 1,000 days of Twitter conversations, in-depth analytics and more.

One important challenge that ReSearch.ly could face is is Twitter starts rolling out a similar powerful analytics platform. Via acquisitions, we know microblogging network definitely considers analytics as a possible monetization opportunity.

Google’s $6 billion bid for Groupon didn’t work out, but it wasting no time preparing its own competing Google Offers local advertising product. The first hints of Google Offers came out last week. Google confirmed it, calling it a “test of a pre-paid offers/vouchers program,” but offered no further details.

Well, we have further details, courtesy of Google’s very own search engine. (When PR fails, just Google it). There is a very simple way to get a list of active Google Offers coupons. It is kind of a back door, but if you do a search for “coupons site:maps.google.com intitle:Google Offers,” you can see almost 42,000 results, most of which link to individual active coupons. For example, here is one for a free yoga class in Chicago (Groupon’s home turf) or another one for 50 percent off lunch at a vegetarian restaurant in Watertown, Massachusetts. You can also add an Offers gadget to your iGoogle home page which shows offers near you.

Google just started promoting the service recently to small businesses and already has about 42,000 offers (assuming each result is a unique offer). Perhaps Google is waiting to get to 100,000 or 500,000 offers before publicly launching the service, but local merchants are already signing up in droves. If you go to an active coupon page, you see the name and address of the business above the actual offer, which is inside a boxed, dotted line. I guess you are supposed to show the coupon on your phone to a cashier or maybe you are supposed to print it and cut it out. The offer details are in the box, along with a coupon code and expiration date. Next to the coupon is a small map showing where the business is located. The iGoogle gadget suggests what Google Offers might look like as an Android app, showing you offers nearby.

Although it’s been called a Groupon clone, Google Offers does not appear to be a group-buying discount service. And Google won’t be selling these deals or collecting money directly from consumers. Instead, Google Offers is a straightforward, self-serve local advertising service. The deals include $1 off Kombucha at the Whole Foods in Manhattan’s Union Square or $10 off a gutter cleaning in Michigan. Unlike Groupon, they do not require a minimum number of people to buy them before they become effective, and they don’t seem to be as fun or whimsical either.

Neither will they drive a huge amount of new customers to these businesses (the deals appear to be more pedestrian than insane). It is a different business model entirely. Groupon convinces businesses to offer amazing deals specifically because of its one-deal-a-day promotion and the promised surge of new customers. Google Offers seems to be more predicated on showing you deals in your vicinity, and will likely be more tied to your mobile phone and Google Maps. This approach may scale better than Groupon, but the quality of the deals may not be as exciting. Obviously, since this is a work in progress, we’ll have to wait and see what other bells and whistles Google Offers actually launches with.

Update: As some commenters point out, these Google Offers look very similar to Google Coupons that have been available to local businesses as a feature of Google Places for a long time. It is possible that this is a rebranding of that feature in front of a broader Google Offers product launch. The iGoogle gadget is also new.

(Hat tip to Steve St. Germain)