Facebook debunked
[Editor's note: This is an Op-Ed piece by Kevin Barenblat, co-creator of SpotDJ] — Facebook and its developer platform f8 are the hot topic of conversation among many in Silicon Valley since its launch May 24. The site is quickly growing up, as folks 35 and older …
Context & Ripple Effects
Three months after Facebook opened its f8 platform, the Valley conversation has split: June brought Valleywag arguing Facebook had thrown the entire startup world for a loop alongside CNET's take on the application feeding frenzy among developers, and now SpotDJ co-creator Kevin Barenblat writes an op-ed pushing back against the hype itself. His angle rests on two observations from the corpus: the user base is maturing past the college demographic into people 35 and older, and the platform's first wave of criticism is landing.
First-order effects
- Facebook is simultaneously absorbing a credibility hit (the $5B workplace-productivity report and the source-code leak) while shipping fixes aimed at exactly those critiques: unified messaging, the iPhone-tailored site, and outbound RSS notification feeds.
- Developers who rushed onto f8 after the May launch now face a maturing, 35-plus audience whose usage patterns differ from the student core the early viral apps were built for.
Second-order effects
- MySpace, which TechCrunch framed as the anti-Facebook at launch, comes under pressure to match a rival that is opening feeds outward rather than keeping data locked inside the garden.
- Employers and workplace-software vendors gain ammunition from the productivity-loss narrative, forcing Facebook to argue utility (email replacement, mobile access) rather than entertainment.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, social networks evolve toward platform-owner-controlled operating layers where distribution rules, feed access, and data portability are set unilaterally — the tension Barenblat's 'debunking' sits inside, since openness via RSS cuts against the walled-garden economics that make the platform valuable.
- Aging-up user bases push social platforms from campus novelty toward general-purpose infrastructure, raising the regulatory and enterprise stakes that follow any service embedded in daily work communication.
The trend: Social networking is consolidating around platform-first gatekeepers whose openness decisions — feeds, APIs, messaging interop — now shape the wider web's data flows.