On the facebook platform - aka: my two cents
I haven’t been a facebook member too long. Admittedly I was hesitant to sign-up for another service (myspace, orkut, linkedin, plaxo, xing, …).
But it was a pleasant surprise, they did many things right, i.e. better than their competitors. The best of all seems to be the facebook platform. Wow. Already tons of cool applications, and many new one can imagine easily.
Even the video application provided by facebook is just smooth. Nice design. And direct access to the webcam (isight in my case). Sweet.
In general everything is well designed and smooth. Not such an ugly hack like myspace. And the “add” button for each application is just smart.
Looking at the platform, this might offer chances and dangers for many companies in the web 2.0 scene.
I am particularly thinking of applications such as event planning (evite, amiando, doodle) or “user generated multimedia shows” (e.g. kyte, which is already available for facebook). (Just thinking some kind of zatoo integration would be cool. “Jon Doe is watching 24″ in the status bar.)
If facebook is able to sustain its growth, the winners will be those who can adapt their business model accordingly. On the other hand it makes it easy for any competing service to build on the social graph of facebook to spread their apps.
The question will be what happens with the companies itself … will they be a kind of “product” for facebook? Exciting times …