Good short counterpoint piece by Jason Kottke the downside implications from my previous post on Facebook. Good debate fodder, he takes a look at it with a longer lens. As one system opens, it seems to close off developers from other more neutral platforms. You could say that’s an artifact of capitalism, for better AND worse… and not the normal way an ecosystem evolves (almost biologically) to support all it’s inhabitants.
If Kottke is right we’ll see Facebooks application architecture fall from favor in a Darwinian evolution, just as AOL, CompuServe and Prodigy all did. On the other hand I think a key difference is that the users of Facebook – at least now – are much more sophisticated than the early users of these services. The internet / Web2.0 gave birth to these platforms, and those who can’t stay inter-operable and evolve to user needs will eventually be left for those that do. Also I think a lot of the “developers” for Facebook are just Web app and content makers seeking another portal to pull people in and show them their value. The companies who serve the pleasure of their users will always be ahead of those trying to isolate or wall-off “the rest”. Jason says:
…I’ve no doubt that Facebook is excited about their new platform (their userbase is big enough that companies feel like they have to develop for it) and it’s a savvy move on their part, but I’m not so sure everyone else should be happy about it. What happens when Flickr and LinkedIn and Google and Microsoft and MySpace and YouTube and MetaFilter and Vimeo and Last.fm launch their platforms that you need to develop apps for in some proprietary language that’s different for each platform? That gets expensive, time-consuming, and irritating. It’s difficult enough to develop for OS X, Windows, and Linux simultaneously…imagine if you had 30 different platforms to develop for.
As it happens, we already have a platform on which anyone can communicate and collaborate with anyone else, individuals and companies can develop applications which can interoperate with one another through open and freely available tools, protocols, and interfaces. It’s called the internet and it’s more compelling than AOL was in 1994 and Facebook in 2007. Eventually, someone will come along and turn Facebook inside-out, so that instead of custom applications running on a platform in a walled garden, applications run on the internet, out in the open, and people can tie their social network into it if they want, with privacy controls, access levels, and alter-egos galore.
Some backstory from Stcott Heiferman here, excellent comments thread.
Extra Credit reading — Social Media: Open platforms and distribution are opposite sides of the same coin and Steve Rubel on Walled Gardens and the Lesson for Social Networks. Rubel says:
For all of the excitement around Facebook and its application platform, it’s essentially a giant walled garden. You can embed virtually anything you want inside Facebook. Just like open APIs, Facebook’s developer program lets anyone create value in the ecosystem.
The problem, however, lies in this fact – Facebook gives nothing back to the broader web. A lot of stuff goes in, but nothing comes out. What happens in Facebook, stays in Facebook. As Robert Scoble noted, it’s almost completely invisible to Google. You can share only a limited amount of data on your public page – as he has here. That’s fine for many users, but not all.
To thrive, all social networks need to enable the community to create value. Facebook gets a big check mark there. However, they also need to give back to the web. Usually this isn’t an issue. When you give back to the web, you get a return in Google Juice. So it’s unclear why Facebook to date remains a walled garden.
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