Waiting for Facebook to mature

Q: Can you spot the common theme running through this list of fast-growing Facebook applications?

A: Each and every one of them is a novelty, entertainment application which doesn't really do anything useful.

Now, 'fast growing' is only  one measure of the success/importance of an application, but I do think this indicates that we're still in an immature phase of Facebook's development.  As I commented on Antony's blog yesterday:

The Facebook platform is still only a couple of months old and so the applications that run on it are fairly simple. The Zombie and Foodfight applications are the Facebook equivalent of Solitaire and Minesweeper on Windows. It will take time for complex applications to be be developed...

I think there are a huge number of great ideas for social networking applications out there which would be useful to users, but would never take off in their own space because of the overhead of users having to create a profile, invite their friends and create their network. The Facebook platform gives application developers a social network that's ready to go, thereby removing this overhead and allowing all sorts of innovative applications to become a reality.

The Facebook platform is unlike most traditional platforms (like computer operating systems or a games consoles) in that it launched to the world without any 'killer apps'. They took the agile approach of getting the platform out there and seeing what people could do with it. I think this was the right approach, I just hope that some high quality, genuinely useful applications get developed before the novelty wears off and people dismiss the Facebook platform as a novelty.

Comments

[Tom Hume]

Playing devils advocate... isn't facebook exactly like all other operating systems in that it's launched without a killer app? What's the killer app bundled with Windows, or MacOS?

My £0.02: the interesting thing will be, as with all platforms, how Facebook treats developers who write for it. There's a pretty strong precedent for platform vendors to quite aggressively muscle in on application providers who prove there's a significant market for their app. Both MS and Apple have been guilty of this in the past...

[Tom Nixon]

The killer app isn't always bundled with the OS itself. I'm thinking about, say, PageMaker on the early Mac.

I completely agree that it does depend on Facebook continuing to open up the platform and play nice with developers.

It'll be interesting to see if/how they embrace open source now that they've assimilated the two Firefox guys and the open source Parakey technology.

[cath]

whilst not a killer app, a useful one popped up last week:

http://justgiving.typepad.com/justgivings_blog/2007/07/justgiving-face.html

this is great i think as when you're raising money for something, you don't want to hassle people once you've asked them, but i know if i'm asked, i often forget even when i'm up for it. a constant, gentle reminder on a friends' facebook page would definitely make it more likely i would put my hand in my pocket.

[Matt Matheson]

Interesting. I created a bebo account and then closed it within a week as felt there was too much clutter and far prefer myspace. I also opened a facebook account, but saw it as quite similar to bebo so haven't ventured too deep into that one and closed that too.

As far as socially driven networking websites go, I couldn't help notice that myspace seems to have a more mature crowd (especially compared to bebo, which I think is aimed more at children). Whether this is because its one of the sites that has been around longer I doubt, but think this is probably because it requires a little more skill to manage. Facebook and bebo provide the tools to design your site easily - with myspace you have to know a little html to manipulate your pages.

Not directly related to your comment, but something myself and friends have noticed when using the sites thats an interesting (and common,ish) obvervation.

[Matt Matheson]

Further to this, another major difference I noticed, a lot of people use Myspace for professional and PR ventures - can anyone not see any famous person/record label/movie/movie star they know on there? I haven't really come across that on the other applications or heard of it in the same way.

I see myspace links everywhere, on posters, tv, radio - but don't see facebook or bebo...