TechFold - Bold tech & web commentary

Bold tech & web commentary

TechFold is technology discussion, commentary, reviews, and opinions from well outside the valley. There's no koolaid to drink here, and TechFold is not in SL, or on Twitter.

Great Facebook App Building Tutorial

Here’s a great Facebook Application building tutorial that walks the reader through the entire “Hello world” process, including authentication, the “facebook markup language” and so on. I’ve been meaning to join Facebook and play around with the platform for a while - this provides a good way to do so.

LinkedIn to announce Knee-Jerk reaction to Facebook

LinkedIn has announced that over the next 9 months they’re going to be releasing API’s for developers to build off of. The timing of the announcement and execution scream “knee jerk” to me.

Despite historical and continuing growth, LinkedIn is under direct threat from Facebook in the professional-networking market. Facebook gets more users and more functionality, its network effects are going to push hard at other social networks. And Facebook’s demographic is going to steal more and more from LinkedIn as their core college market matures and graduates into the workforce - taking Facebook with them.

Mathew Ingram describes the situation even more aggresively, asking “Is it too late for LinkedIn to catch Facebook?” TechCrunch thinks LinkedIn may have life in it yet, but points out that Facebook’s openness makes it a compelling one-stop shop. ParisLemon thinks there’s an opportunity for Facebook and LinkedIn to combine forces. IdentityWoman points out that LinkedIn is passive whereas Facebook’s focus on daily interaction promotes daily use.

api, facebook, linkedin platform

Facebook Gets It, Becoming the Web OS: Microsoft 2.0

Facebook “gets it” in a way that MySpace, record labels, and countless other technical/social troglodytes don’t: if you own the platform, you own the industry. And if you own the industry, you get a cut of it all.

For background, see: TechCrunch,
CenterNetworks (recap), Fortune, and a million others captured on TechMeme.

Here’s my conjecture:

Facebook wants to be the next Microsoft.

Think about it: Microsoft owned the software platform on which the last 2.5 decades of computing has been done, and has profited ridiculously. Facebook is building the next generation platform - the apocryphal Web OS - by recreating the Microsoft environment from the eighties:

Create the platform. (its even called Facebook Platform)
Reach out to developers, make it easier or more profitable to build on your platform. (facebook is hitting both of these)
Let the users get hooked on apps developed on the platform.
Watch the platform spawn a user-driven ecosystem.
Keep users isolated; let them see the benefits, not the plumbing. (windows vs. linux?)
Profit!

Consider what would have happened in the OS market if Microsoft had restricted MS-DOS to only Microsoft applications, or selectively told large, popular vendors they couldn’t run apps on DOS (hello MYSPACE). The first open alternative would have put MS-DOS in the ground. Note too that this is not a discussion of technical superiority: lord only knows, Microsoft’s code has its issues, and the do-what-you-will approach to developers has caused millions of problems - but the open-ness, and ability for anyone to code anything made it the most approachable for every stakeholder in the PC value chain.

IMHO, Facebook is heading towards the same success and was prescient in turning down Yahoo!.

facebook, microsoft, myspace, platform yahoo