Facebook Is No Friend of Power.com
Power.com is a start-up based in Brazil that aims to be the portal through which people access all of their favorite social networking sites. Facebook would prefer that its members access it directly, thank you very much.
Context & Ripple Effects
Social-network aggregation was already being tested by services such as Plaxo and FriendFeed’s feed-centered approach, which sought to make activity across networks easier to follow. Power.com applies the same access-layer logic more directly by positioning itself between users and their chosen networks.
Facebook launched its Platform in 2007 and prioritized its growth during 2008, but its preference for direct member access draws a boundary between inviting outside applications and allowing a third party to own the user’s primary doorway to Facebook.
First-order effects
- Power.com’s effort to serve as a unified social-network portal is constrained because Facebook will not support access through the intermediary.
- Facebook preserves a direct relationship with its members rather than ceding the entry point and user experience to Power.com.
Second-order effects
- Other social aggregators must treat a network’s permission to access accounts as a core business dependency, rather than assuming that public-facing services can be combined into one portal.
- Facebook’s application partners gain a clearer signal that Platform growth does not extend to services designed to replace Facebook’s own destination.
Third-order effects
- The dispute points toward platforms using control of account access as a gatekeeping tool: third-party innovation can be encouraged inside a platform while cross-platform substitutes are kept at its edge.
- If major networks adopt the same posture, social aggregation shifts from an open portal model toward fragmented, platform-controlled access layers.
The trend: Consumer internet platforms are becoming gatekeepers of the account relationship, distinguishing complementary applications from intermediaries that could control user access.