I actually dig the Facebook platform, but this quote is hilarious:
“And looking over press coverage of the announcement today, you’d think it was the late ’90s and Six Degrees had made Flooz its official currency and offered free Kozmo.com deliveries to all its members.”
The truth is that more and more people talk about how it feels like late 90s again.
I realize that you personally need no telling, but as an offhand remark—while it’s true that the ultimate manifestation of a facebook app is as a widget, these aren’t just your garden-variety iframes. ‘Widget’ doesn’t really capture the extent to which facebook has opened their own data and functionality to 3rd Party devs, and how jaw-droppingly well-built the integration is (consider the fact that core facebook functionality, like photo management, is built on the same framework). Facebook is now a platform in the true sense of the word.
As to the substance of the linked criticism: while the platform obviously provides a lot of business value to facebook, I don’t think it’s a walled-garden in the manner that the MS platform is. I’m sure tech pundits are capable of disappearing down semantic rabbitholes debating the analogy though, so I’ll hold off for my part.
As for the rhetoric (“social graph”, etc.)? Well, one can’t really blame them for playing the press for chumps :p
I’m so lost. I have no idea what all those words mean. 🙁
I agree – the Facebook platform is cool and all, but I think these tech writers need to spend a little less time on the computer or something 🙂
*snort* Oh man, that quote is awesome!
Yea, that is pretty funny Matt. 😉
All I will say is that this is indeed BIG news and the platform is actually easy to hook up to for integrations. It is win/win/win for facebook, it’s users and businesses(developers) that choose to leverage the platform and it’s network effect.
That being said we created a blog immediately after the facebook platform launch to review & rate applications. http://www.facereviews.com
we think this is needed to filter through the noise and draw attention to good applications (and possibly not well known) and to expose the weak ones so that they can strive for better builds.
Rodney
p.s. It is built on wordpress cause we love you guys! 😉
“Social” is the new Pink!
Socially, if I may, I’d like to add to the “social clarity” of the “social situation”, and leverage the social gratuity of the social