Priebatsch makes an important distinction between the Social Layer — owned by Facebook and built by many over the past decade — and the Game Layer, which will be built over the next decade.

It seems that every brand is obsessed with being social, and ruthlessly hurling themselves into the Twitter and Facebook echo-chamber by any means possible. Now we already know that throwing yourself into social media without a plan is a recipe for failure, but maybe social media isn’t the answer at all. If Priebatsch’s right, maybe social media is no more than just the plumbing.

The game layer is still very much in its infancy, but Priebatsch is absolutely right when he explains the power behind it. Simply look at the growth on the location gaming platforms Foursquare and Gowalla, where there is rarely any real reason for “checking in” besides getting virtual badges and items that hold no monetary value whatsoever. Or take the Farmville example from his video, where they could change the world by simply tweaking how long it takes before the virtual crops wilt.

We’ve seen new companies emerge that seem to have a grip on the game layer, and of course we’ve seen brands leech on to them with unoriginal and uninspired ideas just to say “Hi. We’re here too”, but I don’t believe that any brand has successfully leveraged this concept and truly influenced their target consumers. I’m a big believer that when it happens, the interactive world will sit up and take notice, and that the first brand(s) to do it will have major success.

So the question is, how can brands and advertisers harness the influence of the game layer, and why hasn’t anyone done it yet?

If you think about it Cascading Style Sheets have been around now since 1996, and heavily adopted by around 2000. Web design has made amazing strides forward and continues to do so every day. Yet we’re still designing in applications originally intended for photo editing, print, or illustration work. It’s time for a new application to emerge, and I truly believe the first ones to do it well will be rewarded heavily.

In his article, Jason Proposes a few simple ideas that are completely do-able by todays standards. These ideas include:

• Grids – One of most important features of web design today. But grids in web design differ from grids in print or anywhere else. A web design grid needs to be fluid, and needs to adjust with elements that may expand or contract for example. Not to mention different page states, and different pages in general.
• CSS Type Styling – We’ve all run into it, we get a page laid out in Photoshop, then decide the links don’t look quite right. We then have to go back and change each individual link by hand, then repeat the process if it still isn’t right. An InDesign Character and Paragraph Style type of tool that allows us to set the h1-h6, links, strong tags, etc would save tons of time.
• Font Stacks - Similar to type styling, being able to set font stacks, and cycle through them to see how the page looks on different OS’s and screens would be great.
• Fluid Design – Browsers aren’t static. Being able to set basic rules such as a centered layout with a dynamic background, that would adjust to window size could help a lot in the design process.

This is just a quick summary of a couple of ideas Jason proposes. Head on over to his blog to read the full article. With the large amount of designer/developer hybrids out there, an application like this could truly be a game changer, and help raise the standard for web design.

The clip really caught my interest, and it is something that I have struggled with in the past, and will struggle with in the future. It offers me comfort knowing that I’m not the only one to feel this way.

So since I’ve been making so many comps of facebook pages for both school and work lately, I’ve been meaning to make an editable .psd template to work off of. I finally got a bit of time to work on this and make a V1. I know a ton of people are making FB comps as well so I figured i’d share it with the world!

So I proudly present the “Fully Editable Facebook Page PSD Template V1” All of the text is completely editable,
images, comments, posts, everything can be changed easily.

Hopefully all you designer friends can get as much use out of it as I will!

Click Here or the pic above to download!

It should go live soon and I will update with a link!

The first week in NYC has been awesome! I have been meeting people non-stop and just exploring everywhere I can.

I am surrounded by some incredibly talented people at TBG… like, no joke… scary talented. I’m working under flash and design guru Kevin Chan, as well as roomba-designer and kickball mastermind Ryan McManus, but I’ve gotten to know and work with a lot of other Barbarians as well. Not to mention I’ve already gotten my hands on some real work on real accounts.

Oh.. and I joined the kickball team. TBG kickball is going to destroy our first opponent on wednesday. No holding back!

Anyways, I’ve got the long weekend ahead of me to do some more exploring of Manhattan. Back to work on tuesday!

One last shot of the Detroit skyline before I move out of the apartment! I land at LaGuardia at 9am on Sunday, and start my internship with the Barbarian Group on tuesday!

If you enjoyed this, you should have seen the day I lost my black half.