The Facebook revolution
The Internet megahit may be growing into the biggest, most valuable database in the world. — When I first met Mark Zuckerberg, he seemed as much a visitor to his surroundings as I was. It was earlier this summer, in Facebook's boardroom in Palo Alto …
Context & Ripple Effects
This Los Angeles Times column lands at the moment Facebook stops being a campus network: this spring it opened membership beyond college students, letting the class of 2007 carry their profiles into real-world networks. The piece frames what that openness creates — potentially the biggest, most valuable database in the world.
The same week's news flow shows the platform being built around that database: Zuckerberg announced the fbFund developer grant program at TechCrunch40 (which then required every application to be resubmitted), while Flyers lets members make their own small display ads. A reported music platform aimed at outdoing MySpace, and a possible Apple tieup, remain unconfirmed.
First-order effects
- Application developers now have a funded path onto Facebook via fbFund, though the program's resubmission requirement resets everyone's application mid-cycle.
- Small advertisers gain a self-serve channel through Flyers, moving ad creation from sales teams to Facebook members themselves.
Second-order effects
- MySpace faces pressure if the reported Facebook music platform materializes as a MySpace-beater rather than an iTunes competitor — though both the platform's aim and any Apple involvement are still unconfirmed.
- Rival social networks must match the grant-funded developer model or risk losing third-party application talent to Facebook's ecosystem.
Third-order effects
- If the database framing holds, Facebook's value shifts from page views to the profile data itself, making targeted self-serve advertising the core business rather than a side product.
- The fbFund pattern — a platform paying developers to build on its data — points toward social networks competing as ecosystems, with member information as the asset both sides monetize.
The trend: Social networks are turning from destination sites into data-and-developer platforms, with Facebook's open registration and funded application ecosystem marking the transition point.