Facebook.com: Future Ghost Town?
On Monday, the world's largest social networking site opened parts of its code to the public. Now, third-party developers can build Facebook applications that will let users post status updates, share pictures and links, and interact with most other elements …
Context & Ripple Effects
Facebook has been prying itself open in stages since 2007, when Dave Winer argued it was genuinely opening up and analysts framed it as a social Web utility company; by November 2007 Business Week was covering it opening the doors wider. Then came the retreat signal: All Facebook declared Facebook widgets dead in October 2008.
Monday's move exposes the stream itself — status updates, photos, links — to outside code, announced on Facebook's own Developers blog. The reaction is split: developers publicly say the platform still opens too little, analysts flag a 'privacy facade' limiting global expansion, and Tech Beat's ghost-town framing remains just that, an unconfirmed speculation rather than a reported trend.
First-order effects
- Third-party developers gain programmatic write access to the activity stream — status updates, photos, link sharing — turning Facebook's core feed into an integration surface rather than a closed feature set.
- The same developer community that says the opening falls short now has a concrete measure of Facebook's generosity: how much of the stream is exposed versus walled off.
Second-order effects
- With Facebook simultaneously floating paid vanity URLs (April 22 poll) and running site-governance votes through Wildfire's application, the stream opening feeds a broader monetization search — distribution power shifts toward whoever controls what flows through the feed.
- A rumored underground market for Facebook public profiles gains more raw material as stream content becomes externally accessible, raising the stakes on where Facebook draws its permission boundaries.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds — incremental openings met with developer disappointment each round — Facebook consolidates as the access layer of the social Web: third-party reach depends on permissions Facebook grants, not on open protocols.
- The 'privacy facade' critique points toward a structural tension between platform openness and the privacy settings Facebook positions as intrinsic limits, which will shape any global expansion.
The trend: Social platforms are exposing their core streams to third-party developers while retaining control over the permission and privacy layer that governs access.