Facebook users vote for iLike, but what happened to Audio?
(Editor's note: We promised a 24-hour moratorium on Facebook coverage. That is now over.) — Here's the early winner of Facebook's open embrace of third-party applications, announced two days ago: iLike …
Context & Ripple Effects
Facebook opened its developer platform at a San Francisco event on May 24, 2007, explicitly branding itself the 'Anti-MySpace' and counting Microsoft among its launch partners. Two days later, the user vote already has a verdict: iLike is the early winner among the first third-party applications.
The speed of that verdict is the real story. TechCrunch frames it as Last.FM being 'too slow' — users simply built their own Facebook music application rather than wait for the incumbent — while Dare Obasanjo's initial assessment of the platform pairs the enthusiasm with early criticism of how it works. In a feed-driven ecosystem, whoever ships first captures the installs.
First-order effects
- iLike converts its early lead into default music-discovery placement inside Facebook profiles and feeds — distribution that would cost any standalone service years of marketing to buy.
- Last.FM loses the race for the music slot on the platform's first day, with users building their own competing Facebook application rather than waiting for an official port.
Second-order effects
- MySpace, cast as the closed foil in Facebook's own launch messaging, faces pressure to match an openness pitch that is actively recruiting its would-be partners.
- Other launch-window developers, including big names like Microsoft, now compete for visibility in a directory where early install counts compound virally, raising the cost of arriving late.
Third-order effects
- Distribution in consumer media shifts from owning a destination site toward embedding inside someone else's social graph, turning standalone music services into candidate features of a platform.
- If the pattern holds, the platform owner becomes the gatekeeper deciding which third-party services win — making access to the social graph itself the scarce asset in the music-and-media stack.
The trend: Consumer web platforms are opening their social graphs to outside developers, and first-wave install races are becoming the decisive distribution channel for music and media services.