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There still has yet to be an application that takes advantage of the real value of the Facebook platform. Current applications are all about virility and simple
by nkohari 19y ago
There still has yet to be an application that takes advantage of the real value of the Facebook platform. Current applications are all about virility and simple fun. While there's nothing wrong with that, the social information about Facebook's users could be utilized for so much more.
Facebook has a chance to be the "source of truth" for the social graph. When you sign up for a new service that has a social aspect, the service could use the Facebook API to learn if your friends are also on the service. For example, what if when you signed up with Twitter, it figured out if any of your friends were already on the site? The future of the Facebook "app" is really a concept that could stand on its own, but instead leverages Facebook so its users don't have to re-create their social graph.
Of course, that means that sites that are "Facebook-driven" would require people to create accounts on Facebook -- at least to take advantage of the social aspects of the site. Depending on the site, that may matter a lot or not that much.
In terms of monetization, I think that Facebook still has yet to reveal their full advertising strategy... the new Pages system and SocialAds are pointless, because they add no real value to the consumer. It's all just glorified spam. They really missed the mark big time, because just because I bought a new digital camera doesn't mean I give a rat's ass about friending Sony.
However, if they could leverage the demographic and interest-based information in a user's profile, and use it to drive very good targeted ads, they could have something special.
- DanielBMarkham 19y agoSo your premise is that there is a race to own all of my friendships, and FaceBook can be the source of truth for that? I understand the premise, but I'm not drinking the coolaid. I have all kinds of friends -- personal friends, professional friends, friends from school, friends from work. I don't want to be mixing those guys up inside of one big FaceBook bag-o-social-goodness. Right now my FaceBook friends are people who contacted me on FaceBook and wanted to link up. That's fine. But I don't go looking for others, and these same folks will be using some other app five years from now and they'll be inviting me to join it. I know, because I've been through several generations of this: classmates.com, MySpace, ICQ, AIM, GMail, etc. Everybody wants to make viral apps, which means everybody is constantly infecting each other and soon there's a new prominent infection going round. Won't be long until somebody out-FaceBooks FaceBook.
- nkohari 19y agoI agree that the Facebook site itself is nothing special, but the data that they control is. The next class of people graduating from college will have had Facebook throughout their entire tenure. It's likely that Facebook will try to evolve to follow them into their professional lives. I also agree about having different kinds of friends. However, it would be pretty simple to categorize friends as colleagues, acquaintances, etc. It might insult people in the beginning, but if it was part of the system, it would become second-nature. Apps that are viral for the sake of virility are a waste of time. They might be fun for awhile, and they might make their creators a little bit of cash, but Vampires and Werewolves will never have a sustainable business model. However, software that leverages the information in Facebook and the virility of the news feed will gain a leg-up on the competition.
- apathy 19y agoVirility != virulence. Virility is manliness. Virulence is the quality of being viral. I was wondering what the hell made an app 'manly' for a bit there.