Personally I look forward to being able to work, connect, socialise, enjoy and stream my choice of content in one place and within one browser wherever I happen to be in the world and of course securely and without risk of invasion of privacy.

In my opinion none of the obvious companies individually can possibly provide me with the above, so until they can collectively deliver the best of each, I guess I just have to put up with the sad fact that corporate competition and greed isn’t always in the interest of the consumer or the environment! Jan at FAMEBOOK – the celebrity amalgamator! Access All Areas – Your backstage pass to the famous – coming soon!

While there may be many applications in each category, they share one key thing – they all sit within Facebook’s infrastructure. So regardless of which applications succeed or fail, Facebook still wins.

This is how Facebook is the operating system. It provides the base level services and allows many other organisations to take their changes on top.

This is very similar to how, other than it’s own commercial interests, Microsoft doesn’t really care who builds applications on top of Windows – provided they build them.

Whether a Windows application attracts a small user base or a large one – they all need Windows to use it.

That’s why the biggest competitor to Microsoft is another operating system, be it opensource, web-based or another for-profit concern.

Equally the biggest competition to Facebook is a system that allows organisations to build applications on top – which is why MySpace has moved in this direction to remain relevant.

These three points have shown the strategic advantage of Facebook.

In addition, other commentators have indicated how Facebook (FB) have opened up the web to app developers. This move in corporate responsibility would have strategically branded Facebook as a good corporate citizen, capturing user (and developers) loyalty.

Clearly strategically, FB has not suffered. Your article, David, amounts to specuation as to what FB could achieved if they pursued an alternative strategy.

No concrete facts. Pure theoretical and analogical speculation! You are in no position to declare their initiative a mistake on mere speculation and analogies.

Apps make Facebook more engaging and fun. The more people who enjoy Facebook, the more peer pressure there is to join Facebook. Apps can also acquire new users for Facebook because apps can email non-users and invite them to use Facebook.

Rather than make commentary on the Facebook platform, the author should write a Facebook application and contribute to a thriving community.

* Recently Popular
* Most Activity
* Most Active Users
* Newest

http://www.facebook.com/apps/index.php?q=fun

No fun!

e.g. IM clients

I really enjoyed this post, however, certainly insightful. The number of applications within categories certainly are deteriorating the network benefits.

http://collegemogul.com

I don’t think this is substantiated. If you want to find something you looking for it..and there are a lot of choices..and when there are really a lot of choices, there’s a need for a recommendation / categorization – basically some abstraction which is trusted.

“More importantly, however, I think Platform ……is counterproductive ….true value of the network.”

What do you mean by this statement? What is the true value of a network? and why is it counter-productive? Are some people quitting face-book because there is now a platform?

You don’t spend enough time on FB it seems. Nor have you interviewed key developers. Otherwise you would have come to understand what is going at the core of the Platform.

Clearly the Platform is allowing approx 16,000 different experiments to run in parallel on understanding what the true value of the network is, which neither FB nor Gal knows yet. But the user base + hapless unwitting devs are helping us all understand what the true value is. By itself FB would be a 2-3 min per visit engagement… with many of the apps highly engaging users, the avg time per visit is far higher for some large set of users. Plugging in apps on top of a multitude of social and context graphs that FB provides, is one sure way to exploit and engage the FB user base. Possibly even bring in new users to engage with their friends on these apps.

On the other hand, FB is discouraging serious apps while spammy apps and games burn through the user base. So what started out as a reasonable experiment has quickly turned into a negative user experience for more and more users. Witness the 1m+ Group on FB for stopping all app invites. That’s a big screaming feedback billboard on the Platform… one which FB seems to be reacting in the wrong way.