Facebook Opens Up Its 'Platform' To Everyone
"Facebook is the anti-MySpace" and "Facebook is a new type of "Web 2.0" portal" are some of the things that were and are being said yesterday and today about the social network's new "Facebook Platform" initiative.
Context & Ripple Effects
Facebook introduced its developer platform at a San Francisco event on May 24, with third-party applications—including one from Microsoft—already announced. The rollout was explicitly framed as an open alternative to MySpace's model.
The following-day platform analysis also recorded criticism, making the issue more than a launch-day branding exercise: Facebook is asking developers to build inside its social network while it sets the terms of access.
First-order effects
- Facebook gives outside developers a distribution route into its network, while gaining a wider set of applications without building each service itself.
- MySpace faces a direct competitive contrast: Facebook can pitch developer openness and third-party application variety as part of the network choice.
Second-order effects
- Microsoft and other application makers must weigh the value of Facebook's user access against building and maintaining services within Facebook's platform rules.
- Facebook's platform analysis and early criticism put pressure on the company to show that developer access produces useful applications rather than a fragmented user experience.
Third-order effects
- If developers concentrate their applications on major social networks, control of the access layer shifts bargaining power toward the network that governs distribution and user relationships.
The trend: Social networks are evolving from standalone destinations into developer platforms, competing to make third-party applications a source of user and ecosystem advantage.