Marc's Voice

Ramifications #1 = follow the money

Now that one of the major social networking systems is opening up, let’s answer some of the nay sayers who have been asking me (for years) “why should we open up?”

Since all these people care about is money, lets examine Facebook as a case study and “follow the money.”

So lets set the stage:

- Friendster are looking like idiots - they blew their lead, never did show us “where’s the money” and they’re threatening us all with lawsuits.

- MySpace breaks 100M and Fox has shown that they’re willing to share the profits with their TV affiliates, create anesthetized channels (for advertisers) and they’e venturing into side businesses like video sharing, mobile platforms, record labels and - eventually - TV shows.

- Bebo is coming on strong - and is the latest darling to turn down huge buyout offers - BTW built with practically just one engineer.

- all sorts of mid-tier players are starting to flex their muscles - and show the variants on these models. Dating, travel, sports, cars, dogs, baby boomers, mothers, families - you name it - they’ll be players.  And you know what?  Only the profitable will survive. Unless their idiot VCs wanna keep funding them. You can never stop that.

- AIMPages (AOL), Cyworld and Microsoft are lurking in the woods, and so is Apple.

- lets mot leave out my friends at Yahoo - either!

- or Tagworld or Frappr - where are THEIR open APIs?

- and perenial players, like all sorts of dating sites and classmates oriented sites.  Even NetFlix and Nike have social network nowadays.

- there’s a new social network being announced just about every day now.  Which means that they’ll be 1,000s of these things soon enough, and 10,000s of these things once PeopleAggregator gets rolling.

- all inter-connected by open APIs and open standards.

But remember my new schtick - before there are open standards - there need to be clear examples of end-user benefits - for all to see.  When something this new becomes reality, its imperative to have early great examples (like Flickr.)

About 15 hours after finding out this news - here’s what we got:

- you need a Facebook login to get access to the API keys (sorry Dave)

- the keys to the API are tied to an I.P. address

- it was Chris Messina who gave me the poop - being the seed of the scoop. Lord knows wher ehe got it from.

- Liz Gannes is reporting that Facebook is limiting requests to 100,000 per hour for web apps and five per second per user of desktop apps.

What we don’t know (as of yet):

- will the ‘friends’ access expose an email to those people - so we can auto-register folks when they’re imported into a system

- do they provide an ‘opt-in’ for folks - to let THEM control if their email is moved around by others or not

- how robust (in general) are these APIs?

- what the terms are for commecial exploitation

There are plenty of precedents for these kind of APIs (Amazon, eBay) and plenty of interest in using them.  This will make the ad hoc eco-system marketplace that’s been growing up around MySpace look pathetic if they do it right.

Which will EXACTLY implement the strategy Facebook has been executing - which is:

- take their position of strength with colllege kids

- and branch out to enterprise and business licensing

- build up their OWN ecosystem, based upon open APIs

- now watch as their college kids migrate out of school and spread the good cheer at their new jobs - thereby shifting Facebook from college kid oriented to ‘entrenched in enterprise’ - brilliant!

Notice they have a deal with Chase for exclusive credit cards for their ‘kids’. Rumor has it that 1,000 corporations have been using Facebook.  Open APIs are essential to that strategy.

Pete Cashmore is calling for MySpace APIs.  Me too!

As Jeremy Owyang says:

if done correctly, these APIs could replace many stale corporate intranets (esp if folks have to rely on a centralized group to update content) and it could tie to other tools such as linkedin, events, calendars, contacts, etc. Think about the rich profile information an employee could put on their Facebook account that could show the skills, projects, they’ve completed.

Now watch Facebook print money.

All because they opened up.

As Ben Werdmuller puts it:

….opening an API is the ultimate in involving users in your community. By doing this, you allow them to help you build it - and because an API allows tools to be produced to interface with your existing features, you also allow your users to use your site in the way that best suits them. From usage patterns and direct feedback you can derive what you’re doing wrong, and improve accordingly. But more to the point, because users are now a part of your infrastructure, they will evangelise and promote your community of their own accord.

Take THAT you closed minded bigots!  I predict that even mighty SixApart will open up their APIs and get this train a rolling.  With all these deals humming along I’m hoiping that being OPEN becomes a requirement, instead of an anomaly, and that nobody funds anything UNLESS they’re open.

We’ll look back on all this one day. and find that Aug. 15, 2006 was a pivotal moment.  Thanks again Mark!