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Yes, you are right, Mark Z needs to take your classes....sheesh when will you enter the real world?
--b
Did you ever buy a copy of Windows? People are forced to use Windows, if you buy a pc it's already there.
Facebook received its $15 billion dollar evaluation based on the idea that they were going to become the 'social operating system'. The fact that they were able to raise $300+ mm at that evaluation is reason enough to prove that Platform was a unbelievable success for the company.
The Platform also spurned a tremendous amount of growth for the company. The press and hoopla around the whole thing was enough to brand Facebook in the minds of every single person in America.
By launching Platform, Facebook also positioned itself as the market leader. Every social network and silicon valley startup spun their wheels and used huge amounts of resources playing catch up and 'me too' to the Big Bad Wolf. Only now (almost 8 months later) is their second biggest competitor finalizing the launch of their dev platform (can we say loser?).
Its yet to be seen if Platform will translate into being what Zuck projected. They could scrap it in 10 months and still be miles ahead of where they were before.
To me, damn good strategic move.
and experimentation (causing other social networks to follow suit). Instead of
Building its platform and building its network are the same thing.
Facebook's platform has been around less than a year; it's going to be difficult to make broad-brush generalizations about it (much less apples/orange comparisons to other platforms) for a while.
Facebook applications are going to allow you to better harness your network and thus better unite the individual's network in more useful ways than are now available.
The Internet currently doesn’t produce an environment where sophisticated enough applications can be developed (at least not without a lot of effort) that take people’s focus away from desktop applications. HTML, Javascript, AJAX isn’t cutting it, especially with browser incompatibilities! We have more work to do with Internet development technologies before an Internet platform is going to be where people spend most of their time interfacing with applications.
Frankly, "social networking" as application is boring to me and it may prove to be a fad. I don't really care about the minor personal gestures of my 400+ friends. But the social platform is exceptionally compelling to me as a user, developer and visionary. Social discovery and vetting of application is huge. I'll drop one app and add a competitor in 2 minutes. My friends will do the same if it offers a compelling value.
Your application of the old school metrics of the PC platform to a social platform ignores the low switching costs, social discovery of applications, incredibly low marketing costs and all of the other benefits of a social platform that will power future applications. The fact that one person in a dorm room can write a killer app that can spread virally is exceptionally powerful. That simply cannot happen on the PC. It can happen on the web, but having done it a couple of times myself, I can tell you it is costly.
Will Facebook become the ultimate platform, will OpenSocial win, will browsers encapsulate social connectivity across all websites/webapps, will the semantic web finally deliver? I don't know the winner, but social apps are here to stay. Yes there will be a lot of crap apps, but the social fabric will help separate the wheat from the chaff.
Sorry, but I give your analysis an F :)
"platform does little to build the network..." Its a little unfair to blame the platform for this. I think its because the applications that have been developed so far haven't been good or compelling enough.
I think the long term value of the platform approach is that Facebook acquired a huge developer community. By taking the platform approach Facebook has developed this new asset in its developer community. My guess is that this will pay off in (in ways it is hard to imagine now) the long run as web apps become more common place.
Does that analysis include the millions of new facebook users that signup just to see all the new apps?
By releasing the platform, Facebook off-loaded some of the burden of keeping their users interested to other developers. In the end, that is much cheaper than trying to build enough applications themselves to keep people interested.
As noted by several commentators, Platform’s most obvious benefits are towards maintaining the network, most notably the ability to quickly generate a large and diverse number of applications, and hence keep users engaged. However, on balance, I don’t believe the open nature of Platform represents the best way to create useful applications for reasons mentioned in my column; and also, because the sheer number and clutter of apps is overwhelming, confusing, and annoying to a significant proportion of users.
More importantly, however, I think Platform--in its current incaration--is a mistake, because it is counterproductive towards the goal of unlocking the true value of the network.
I guess what you are proposing is a closed platform where applications are release like hit movies in a controlled fashion to ensure consistent user experience and in sync with the overall goal to grow the user base.
What does, such an approach, say about the long-tail dynamic proposed by Chris Anderson?
Applications on Facebook will be different than applications on Windows. They will help people connect rather than fragment. While I agree than application integration is sorely lacking in Facebook, I am sure this will be a part of the platform and even if not -- applications can interoperate off-platform through their own APIs. As a desktop application analogy, consider that you can work with somebody else's Word documents in OpenOffice...
Survival of the fittest implies that the best wins out but where you have network externalities this isn't necessarily the case e.g. X application on facebook might not be the "best" technically or otherwise but wins out based on the fact that it was first to get to a critical mass of users (the network effect).
Think betamax vs vhs - betamax a better technology but lost due to network effects (more content, users went to vhs).
IBM's stuff (software and hardware) is only partly open (a kind of controlled open via partnerships and selective support) and corporations regularly choose it over more open alternatives because of the benefits Gal describes - non-fractured, etc.
Everyone's darling is Apple and a lot of what people like about their solutions is how well integrated and "clean" they are. This is achieved because they are relatively closed. In fact Apple is currently trying to create a platform out of a very popular product that has similar fatigue risks. Comparing the iPhone platform and how open/closed it is to the Facebook platform sounds like an excellent assignment for some b-school students.
Just think about what could happen on Facebook if they offered some great apps via great partnerships. Think Apple/Adobe, Pixar/Disney, Apple/Google (on the iPhone).
As a simple example, a Facebook/Outlook integration would make FB valuable to tons of business users that FB doesn't reach today, and although a third-party developer could create this, the reality is that 15 different developers will create it and cause confusion and stratification, and thus frustration in the user base. If it came from Microsoft, everyone would use the integration and FB's value goes way up.
Facebook Platform is the long tail approach. But 80% of the value is in the short part of the curve, and that's what FB needs to capture. Which means hiring BizDev people and creating great partnerships with top-name established software companies (web, desktop and even enterprise). The trouble is that it would take the kind of "traditional" thinking executive that Zuck hates to get something like this done. This probably seems radical, but move MZ aside and put someone in there from IBM.
The idea of facebook platform is "share your service",vs. "share your content" as myspace or youtube.
Do most users first register on myspace or youtube then view the content or view the content first then register?
The real problem with facebook, as you hinted a little, is that it's not meant for serious business.
They've got enough user base, enough applicaitons, but the questions is how to cash out? Up till now, no social network site is very sucessful at this.
You don't spend enough time on FB it seems. Nor have you interviewed key developers. Otherwise you would have come to understand what is going at the core of the Platform.
Clearly the Platform is allowing approx 16,000 different experiments to run in parallel on understanding what the true value of the network is, which neither FB nor Gal knows yet. But the user base + hapless unwitting devs are helping us all understand what the true value is. By itself FB would be a 2-3 min per visit engagement... with many of the apps highly engaging users, the avg time per visit is far higher for some large set of users. Plugging in apps on top of a multitude of social and context graphs that FB provides, is one sure way to exploit and engage the FB user base. Possibly even bring in new users to engage with their friends on these apps.
On the other hand, FB is discouraging serious apps while spammy apps and games burn through the user base. So what started out as a reasonable experiment has quickly turned into a negative user experience for more and more users. Witness the 1m+ Group on FB for stopping all app invites. That's a big screaming feedback billboard on the Platform... one which FB seems to be reacting in the wrong way.
I don't think this is substantiated. If you want to find something you looking for it..and there are a lot of choices..and when there are really a lot of choices, there's a need for a recommendation / categorization - basically some abstraction which is trusted.
"More importantly, however, I think Platform ......is counterproductive ....true value of the network."
What do you mean by this statement? What is the true value of a network? and why is it counter-productive? Are some people quitting face-book because there is now a platform?
e.g. IM clients
I really enjoyed this post, however, certainly insightful. The number of applications within categories certainly are deteriorating the network benefits.
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http://www.facebook.com/apps/index.php?q=fun
No fun!
Apps make Facebook more engaging and fun. The more people who enjoy Facebook, the more peer pressure there is to join Facebook. Apps can also acquire new users for Facebook because apps can email non-users and invite them to use Facebook.
Rather than make commentary on the Facebook platform, the author should write a Facebook application and contribute to a thriving community.
These three points have shown the strategic advantage of Facebook.
In addition, other commentators have indicated how Facebook (FB) have opened up the web to app developers. This move in corporate responsibility would have strategically branded Facebook as a good corporate citizen, capturing user (and developers) loyalty.
Clearly strategically, FB has not suffered. Your article, David, amounts to speculation as to what FB could achieved if they pursued an alternative strategy.
No concrete facts. Pure theoretical and analogical speculation! You are in no position to declare their initiative a mistake on mere speculation and analogies.
While there may be many applications in each category, they share one key thing - they all sit within Facebook's infrastructure. So regardless of which applications succeed or fail, Facebook still wins.
This is how Facebook is the operating system. It provides the base level services and allows many other organisations to take their changes on top.
This is very similar to how, other than it's own commercial interests, Microsoft doesn't really care who builds applications on top of Windows - provided they build them.
Whether a Windows application attracts a small user base or a large one - they all need Windows to use it.
That's why the biggest competitor to Microsoft is another operating system, be it opensource, web-based or another for-profit concern.
Equally the biggest competition to Facebook is a system that allows organisations to build applications on top - which is why MySpace has moved in this direction to remain relevant.
Personally I look forward to being able to work, connect, socialise, enjoy and stream my choice of content in one place and within one browser wherever I happen to be in the world and of course securely and without risk of invasion of privacy.
In my opinion none of the obvious companies individually can possibly provide me with the above, so until they can collectively deliver the best of each, I guess I just have to put up with the sad fact that corporate competition and greed isn't always in the interest of the consumer or the environment! Jan at FAMEBOOK - the celebrity amalgamator! Access All Areas - Your backstage pass to the famous - coming soon!