Like many of us, Jeff Pulver has been playing with Facebook recently. He writes:
As more and more software developers integrate their applications with Facebook, Facebook has become that much more valuable…especially when the third-party applications add to the overall end user experience. It might have been a moment of sheer Genius or Madness when the Facebook team decided to open up their APIs, but WOW!. By doing so, Facebook has moved itself up in the ecosystem and is quickly becoming something even bigger than it ever was.
Yup. The game is transformed from "who can build the biggest social network" to "who can build the richest social networking platform". Online services gave way to social networks which are now giving way to the social platform. We've had inklings of this with Marc Andreesen's Ning and Marc Canter's People Aggregator, but the story today is all Facebook. Why? Classic platform strategy dictates that applications pull platforms through. It wasn't until there was significant momentum in Facebook that the strategy could have been executed. The momentum didn't materialize to the same extent around prior efforts.
And like Jeff, I find myself messaging via Facebook more and more often. It's turning me from a Blackberry user into a text messaging user.
Alec Saunders is the Vice President of Developer Relations for BlackBerry make Research in Motion. This is his personal blog, with his personal viewpoints. Prior to this Alec was the CEO and co-founder of Calliflower — the easiest way to hold a meeting, online, on a conference call, or on the go. A double-decade veteran of product management and marketing, he spent nine years at Microsoft where he helped launch Windows 95, the first two versions of Internet Explorer, the Universal Plug and Play initiative, the push into home markets, opt-in email marketing and what might well go down in history as the very first direct email list ever.
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I have seen the exact same pattern in my text usage, I am even considering canceling my Rogers Data Plan (which would bring me great joy) and switching to text only.
There does seem to be a new momentum to Facebook. I’ve been on there for months, but didn’t find many people I knew that used it. Now it seems to be ramping-up fast. One thing I like about Facebook (for example in contrast to LinkedIn) is the transcript/stream that shows activity of your friends, so there’s always a stream of news. This is very engaging. The fact that it links in other sources like Jaiku and Twitter is also a plus, saves having to visit other portals.
But the apps … yes, they’ve really hit on something there. I’ve noticed that when friends install an app (which you see in the transcript), I often go and see what the app is about, and try it myself. This is a fantastic way to virally promote an app, which in turn might integrate other services and social networks (like Skype), and give more paths for finding friends and colleagues to link up to.
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