DISQUS

John Philip Green · 1 year ago

I'd be curious to know what Albert Lai thinks about all this... his company Kontagent just won a fbFund grant. He must feel there is still opportunity there.

As for me, I'm with you 100%. I don't know that you could ever build something as meaningful as Facebook ON Facebook.

omarismail · 1 year ago

I feel I should comment for consistency's sake. The initial promise of FB was certainly unmet. Kudos to you for seeing the way in which FB would treat developers. There were still some success stories, and some millionaires were made, but overall not the Next Big Thing.

Now Facebook Connect, that's where the real party is!

Jevon · 1 year ago

Sorry for the ridiculous gloating,. I am being a jerk to have some fun. ;-)

That said, I KNEW you would bring up connect. I am still digging in on it and need to understand it a bit better, so no comments yet good or bad.

omarismail · 1 year ago

I think it's a good thing. But I was wrong before... :P

Looking forward to hearing your analysis.

Christopher Pyper · 1 year ago

Jevon,

Absolutely true. I have been saying the same thing myself for a long time. Facebook was much better when it was simply about keeping in touch with friends, planning events, and posting pictures. After they opened it up as a platform it soon became cluttered with people throwing hot-dogs and vampire bites. When I saw how the new interface design was trying to suppress all these terrible applications, I new the people at Facebook had realized the same thing.

Your Microsoft paint image in the middle was a nice touch.

Jevon · 1 year ago

"Your Microsoft paint image in the middle was a nice touch." -- I am glad somebody noticed!

Mark · 1 year ago

Dead unless you got in early.

Webconomist · 1 year ago

Jevon I think you're right that FB is dead in terms of being a developer or building on their Social Network; but I don't think it's dead as a standalone service/product. People still use it, and subscribers are growing. FB is about one-one or one-few group relationships, the apps don't reflect that very nature.

FB totally messed up it's partnering/developer program and I think they realized this with the silly apps that were built like racing cars and vampire bites - RIM is smarter in this regard. It was novel so people tried it, but in our 90-Second Economy or Attention Economy, they aren't sustainable. We get bored too fast!

It's how FB is "used" by Participants (I hate the term "user") that is changing. It will be a "connecting" place, then once connected, the relationship will move elsewhere (i.e. Outlook or a phone call) and FB just becomes a hub. It's a "general" space for all demographics, whereas LinkedIn is more business focused...further fragmentation.

It's not dead, just morphing. I think Facebook Connect is as useless as Flock, which will fade to be a minor player.

csmillie · 1 year ago

The new Facebook profile has been a good separator of engaging applications vs non-engaging. If your strategy on FB was to put up a profile box and have users spam their friends for virtual dollars its a tough change...

I still believe that the Facebook Application platform is a powerful tool to promote your brand or you website. Purely from a traffic perspective Facebook is good value. There are very few cheaper sources even if you completely ignore the brand development that is also possible.

I think the value of Facebook is still ease of communication and engagement within your friend network. This is available for free, on most of the other platforms listed the communications between individuals are limited and there is no structure of friend relationships. The result is that the virality of these platforms is fairly limited and your cost per engagement is very high ( ie search at cost per click ).

Healy · 1 year ago

FB's still not a bad way to cheaply acquire users to other sites, but the application market is not maturing as people hoped. I've seen great user acquisition success with FB groups and highly target advertising using the FB platform (although my own effort fell flat on its face.)

My big question is how the iPhone application world will evolve... any thoughts? (I know you have to support RIM given your location, but still you must have an opinion.)

Igniter · 1 year ago

Outlook and Blackberry are definitely dominant and where the action is now as far as social graph content and mobile device powerusers - if you can leverage it. Organizationally though I think both MS and BB are struggling with really understanding the way the markets and 'users' are evolving. Google and to a lesser degree Apple, are making serious moves much more effortlessly - moves that I think could tip the game very quickly. I keep thinking to the social/semantic gold mine sitting with google as I host email through google apps, run all my searches through them, and will likely move to Android within the next year. Their big test - which is being challenged - is if they can maintain their 'do no evil' position. Be interested to see where startups are making their bets at startupempire.

oryx_orange · 1 year ago

I think both Jevon's comment about "The Web" as a platform and Igniter's about Google are bang on. "Do no evil" and stop trying to rule your own little empire becomes ever more important as the glass on the fishbowl we're all living in gets clearer and clearer. Google's support of Open ID is no accident - it's both a very smart business decision and a PR move, that announces loud and clear it doesn't want to just be in the search business but the Web business. And Igniter, you'll see at StartupEmpire where I'm making my bet.

Jonathan McGee · 1 year ago

Hey Jevon!

Great article. This caught my eye because we've had this conversation come up almost on a weekly basis. These are interesting times and we can't help but keep contrasting Facebook's / Apple's / Google's path from 2004-on vs. Microsoft's path from 1994-on. You've pointed out how the way a platform sees its partners is key. I couldn't agree more. With MS in the 90's, you had an ISV with a piece of software it could sell with no cut going to MS. These attractive economics were a crucial driver in the creation of the biggest, most successful platform of all time, MS Windows.

Facebook's (ongoing) practice of serving its own ads alongside its platform apps always struck me as out-of-line in terms of a healthy platform/partner relationship, since they were/are directly cutting into profits that (IMO) rightly belong to the independent software creators. The equivalent in the 90's would have been MS charging a profit-damaging "MS tax" on every piece of Windows software that went into the marketplace.

The next big thing in software may be a company that offers the same thing MS offered in the 90's: a general platform with broad reach and no (direct) cutting into partners' profits. "Cloud" infrastructure companies and companies that abstract the infrastructure to increase development productivity could be ideal candidates.

Time will tell whether Facebook will become the MS of the 2000's, or just another app on top of a "real" killer platform, yet to be revealed.

Dean Burns · 1 year ago

I have always seen - and in some cases written and spoke - that Facebook in and of itself was someone else's system... and any app developer was the equivalent of the bootleg t-shirt salesperson... there might be a market, but watch out for two things: (1) when the venue decides to sell competitive products to your bootlegs... your market shrinks significantly...
(2) annoyed fans who just wanted to see the concert and find your bootleg booth in way of their view... and watch your customer service/complaints handling and acquisition costs increase...
While my view is often seen as too direct/clear-cut... at least my general perspective is shared by someone...
D.

Roy Pereira · 1 year ago

While most Facebook applications saw a dramatic decrease in usage after the new profile launch, but that doesn't mean that that platform is dead. It is just that with any closed platform, if the owner's of that platform decide to change it to the detriment of its eco-system. Yea, it hurts when your revenue is cut in half, but you are playing in some one else's sandbox, so they make the rules.

I think it has made app developers take the reality pill and realize that Facebook isn't the magical fountain of cheap user acquisition and unlimited revenue that doesn't have any string attached. But compared to other mediums and online mechanisms, it is still one of the best places to raise awareness of brands and to acquire users.

Facebook is just another platform, but it should remain on the list of top platforms (for now) along with iPhone, Blackberry, Web and Windows. It will probably and eventually go the way of Friendster when newer options come in to the market and present a more compelling value-proposition to its target audience.

Red Canary · 6 months ago

The top application developer on Facebook (Zynga) has revenues in excess of 40 million. http://venturebeat.com/2009/04/21/zynga-becomes... Say what you want but I'll take that much money for a dead platform.

Jevon · 6 months ago

You can believe those rumors all you want, but a lot of purported "revenue" numbers from FB developers have been debunked in the last year.