Is Facebook the Next Google? - Jerry Weinstein

Originally published June 13 2007 Facebook39s new platform opening the site to allcomers might be new to the marketplace but Marc Canter late of Macromedia has been touting its basic ideas for some time The CEO of Broadband Mechanics came up with the concept of Digital Lifestyle Aggregators or DLAs some time ago and has since remarked that Facebook is the first Web property to embody its ideasComparisons of Facebook to MySpace have become instantly passamp233 Instead industrywatchers are asking if Facebook is the next Google If you39re involved in building a consumerfacing Web site the Facebook model is so powerful you might instead consider applying your energies to a Facebook app It offers developers building blocks faster access to a rich source of data and capabilities otherwise unavailable brand exposure opportunities deep integration throughout Facebook and revenue opportunities that make Facebook the hot webproperty of the momentThe 39widget39 marketplace has received 250 million in investor funding over the last 18 months drawing attention to the contrasting widget policies of Facebook and MySpace Whereas Facebook invited dozens of developers to play on its platform MySpace limited all its widgets to Flash and consequently has a track record of banning developers including Revver vidiLife Stickam Imeem and Photobucket first banning the latter then buying them late last month perhaps as a miscued reaction to Facebook39s dominance in photosharingBut is Facebook39s newly launched platform F8 a MySpace killer There is consensus that the Rupert Murdoch property must act If one has a fixed advertising budget and has to choose between the two platforms it39s a nobrainer as things stand Naturally PicksPal founder Tom Jessiman is given to a sports analogy quotIt39s MySpace39s time to hold servequotFacebook advertisers like PicksPal Twitter and iLike find they can develop a richer more evolved relationship with the community Jessiman for example rather than building pages or aggregating a community can stick to what PicksPal is best at building a game kernelRegarding the Photobucket banning wrote a poster on Gigaom quotMySpace is totally chump for pulling this kind of crap Friends shouldn39t let friends lock themselves into closed networksquot Indeed Canter holds that quotThe new lockin is no lockin The giant chess game surrounding whitelabeled social networks has shifted to a new level Now all platforms have to be open Now all platforms have to let their endusers control their own data and contentquot And he doesn39t stop there Canter maintains that quotDLAs are the solution for convergence a way to bring together all the aspects of one39s digital lifestyle into one comprehensive distributed open platform made up of multiple vendor39s products and servicesquotHow have Facebook members actually reacted to this new Open Door Policy Very favorably Facebookers continue to be able to browse clean usable profiles within their networks particularly compared to MySpace39s interface and they will have access to virtually limitless tools beginning with a roster of eightyfive applications on launch which will in turn increase retention time on Facebook There are now 300 applications at press But more than a few have crowed that Facebook is then going the way of MySpace open to spam visual noise and people who aren39t what they seem Facebook can address this partially at least at the outset It continues to have what chief revenue officer Mike Murphy calls quotspectacular privacy controlsquot and settings that the individual user can control reassuring its community that they can block both spam and impostersAnd advertisers In addition to the greater reliability of Facebook vs MySpace members the Platform allows for unmatched deep integration on the Social Graph ILike is proof positive of a levelplaying field iLike39s widget was built to support their music recommendation service inside Facebook It had no publicity but took off like a rocket Its audience within Facebook is now larger than its core audience on iLikecom Its success is less about the user experience than the hunger for a music tool and easy access to itAs Facebook goes forward apart from managing growth interesting questions arise First and foremost spam spam spam Facebook39s been inoculated as compared to MySpace because it was velvetroped No longer Secondly will Facebook39s sixty engineers continue to work in parallel with the hundreds of thirdparty developers that will be creating widgets for Facebook or will they begin to act as curators Just how level is the levelplaying field There are now 47000 networks on Facebook including the IRS CIA the New York Times and yes MySpace There are three basic applications official such as PicksPal unofficial a fan created a Lastfm widget and a sponsored app Red Bull offers a virtual game of rock paper scissors What happens when CBS the new corporate owner of Lastfm decides to launch an official Lastfm widget in Facebook and the unofficial Lastfm widget built by Joe Public comes up against the official widget The Facebook community has embraced the unofficial widget by downloadingadopting it en masse Will the two coexist battling it out for community respect or will the official brand and its new owner demand a cease and desist If Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg39s vision for collaboration and openness holds the answer is a foregone conclusion The two battle it out While this policy is commendable when the law of unintended consequences kicks in it39s anyone39s guess

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