If Facebook's Platform Is A Strategic Mistake, It's In Facing The Wrong Direction
from the not-open-enough dept
VentureBeat is running an opinion piece suggesting that Facebook's platform strategy is a strategic mistake which got me thinking. I disagree with the author of that piece, David Gal, who claims that the platform strategy is a mistake because it "squanders" rather than helps the core asset of Facebook, which is the community of people. That's difficult to believe, as the platform itself is what's created numerous applications within Facebook that have made the network itself more valuable to those members because it actually gives them something to do with all of their friends, rather than just connect to them. So it's difficult to see how Gal reaches his conclusion. His suggestion that there are just too many applications being developed doesn't really matter, as it's the top applications that are the ones that people find useful, and which they use to add value to the overall network itself.However, the article did get me thinking about whether or not Facebook has made a strategic mistake with its platform strategy. When the Facebook platform strategy was first announced, it made a lot of sense. We've been waiting and waiting and waiting for someone to build out a true "web platform" (and remain amazed that Google has repeatedly ignored the opportunity). However, while the Facebook platform strategy may have made sense initially, it's way too inwardly focused. That is, it's been entirely focused on having people build applications within Facebook to get access to its users. What would have been a lot more interesting and a lot more powerful is the ability to build applications for outside of Facebook that would leverage the power of the people inside Facebook. While I'm sure the short-term view is that Facebook needs to keep people locked in, the long-term benefit needs to be making something that's really useful -- and so far, it's not clear the Facebook Platform has really reached that stage.
As such, perhaps it's not too surprising that many of the more successful Facebook apps to date have really just been focused on games and music, rather than anything all that productive. Turning the community inside out, so that it can take part in activities outside of just the Facebook arena could be a lot more interesting. Right now, Facebook's Platform seems designed to keep people in Facebook so that advertisers get value. But the real opportunity is in using the people in the community to do something of value and to provide value back to those users as well. Hopefully, that will be the next stage of growth that we see out of the Facebook platform, or expect to see people start to drift elsewhere.
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Filed Under: business models, platform, social networks, strategy
Companies: facebook
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Facebook Applications
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Most of the app just suck...
I don't want to completely clutter up my profile with a bunch of stupid inane crap, but my friends feel slighted when I deny whatever crap it was they sent me in the first place...
No, I don't want to race you in some silly 2D app that can barely be considered a 'game' so you can get points to level up to the next car you want that doesn't even impact your ability to play the 'game' but is merely some completely pointless and valueless status symbol, unfortunately the only status that it symbolizes is that you have wasted more people's time than the next jack@$$ that sends me an invite to this pointless app...
Its enough to make me want to close up shop on all these damn sites once and for all, heres my email address, if that's too basic for you then you can shove your social networking site where the WiFi doesn't reach!
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tough to balance
Look at beacon for an example for just how pissed people are that you find out after the fact that a site is giving facebook info without your consent....I've swore off facebook as much as possible for that reason...blocking beacon or not.
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Facebook strategy
True, the level of information shared by accepting the app needs to be defined clearer and the reason for this information to be shared also is in desperate need of clarification.
Facebook does have an events feature though, which allows users to invite and respond to invites to functions offline. I see the value in this, as it extends your message quick enough to your target audience, which is great and to many, cheaper than calling everyone.
I have also managed to start a Facebook group, called CheapTrip.co.za. The group has grown fairly rapidly enjoying the benefit of viral marketing and has successfully managed to attract new unique users to my website, thus turning it into revenue.
The success of the viral marketing comes in light with the "Six degrees of separation" theory being proved almost hauntingly too often by meeting old friends through friends of friends.
I think applications displaying movie schedules, and flight status updates, or train schedules, exam time tables, assignment updates etc are the kind of thing that could add value to Facebook and perhaps thousands of companies will start allowing its employees to use Facebook again during office hours.
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Facebook v. Open Social
The eventual platform "killer app" (NOT scrabulous) will need to leverage data from multiple networks, not just one.
[although wouldn't scrabulous on facebook be better...if users from any social net could play together?]
Umair Haque said all of this 4 months ago:
http://www.bubblegeneration.com/2007/11/research-note-opensocial-vs-facebook.cfm
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Just sayin'
;-)
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Re: tough to balance
I've come to realize that the main reason why Facebook has been so hesitant to take down the walls is that they're afraid of the privacy and security implications. Things are a bit better off, in terms of privacy settings and the like, because Facebook has such a tight control on things. It'll be interesting to see if they can open up their system in a positive way (e.g. data portability and such buzz words) without losing their grip on privacy and security issues.
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google?
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Facebook's JavaScript Client Library might enable
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