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A Real Open Book

They’re all over the news these days, the latest community networking site to make a lot of waves, Facebook. If you’re watching from the outside, you might see another in the long string of community networking sites, from Friendster to Tribe, MySpace and all the rest. So why is facebook pulling any surprises?

Well for starters Facebook recently opened up it’s platform in 2006 to non .EDU domains. That was a big change, but what’s driving things now is it’s open API. It’s all about applications on Facebook now, with almost 5000 to choose from. And that number is growing. On Facebook there are applications to integrate flixter, your movie watching preferences, or twitter, your moment by moment update of your movements. There’s a skype app, and one for various instant messengers. Like to use Yelp as a platform for restaurant reviews, there’s a plugin for you too. Want to remember birthdays, Facebook is there for you. From purity tests, to gifts, to vampires, to “poking” the virtual knock at the cubicle next door, facebook is becoming a one stop shop for your internet life. That’s something that is certainly different.

Stu Philips argues that it’s like Fruit Flies for Applications. It allows developers to try out their ideas quickly and easily, and see which ones take off, and which ones fall by the wayside. With a huge community base of users it’s no wonder.

The other day over dinner at Souen I was talking about this idea with your vacationing intrepid editor. He pointed out that although Facebook is indeed inwardly open, that is because of it’s open API, it can *TALK* easily to other sites, other sites cannot easily communicate with Facebook. Take for instance published urls a la MySpace, or Linkedin. You can share them with everyone. However at least presently, you cannot reach a Facebook profile unless you’re a member of the community. So that is a very valid point, and not surprisingly a business model that some web 2.0 companies have chosen to follow. Time will tell if that works well or not for Facebook.

Back in 2004 Joel Spolsky argued that Microsoft had already lost the API wars and clearly they are less at the forefront these days. But another force might be at work here. One that comes into play as systems, and their interconnectedness becomes ever more complex. In those cases, standards or “open standards” become more and more crucial to all players on the field. This is exactly what the Economist has said recently in an article

Stay Vigilant that although “the computing world has now become so interconnected that it will be hard for a single company to control it” we should still keep an eye on the monopolies anyway.

With all that said, it’s clear that a company like facebook may be building a proverbial dashboard that in some ways Google Homepage no iGoogle and Netvibes tried to do with some success. The thing is with Facebook, it has a much wider application because so many different types of content can be integrated there.

With the web 2.0 landscape changing everyday it is anyones guess where the cards will fall. But one thing is for sure, the companies that are more open, and interoperate better, seem to be holding on stronger, and that’s to everyone’s benefit.

This article was orginally published as part of my monthly newsletter Open Insights on October 1st, 2007. Subscription info can be found there as well, if you’re interested. Cheers!