Zach Holman

Let me make a prediction: within the next 1-2 years, regardless of whether or not Facebook gets bought out by a Google or a Yahoo or a Microsoft, Facebook will gain in popularity while simultaneously eschewing their core group of users.

Now let me elaborate. The problem here is Facebook apps. This is a very, very large can of worms. Facebook apps, by all accounts, is a tremendous success. Thousands of developers are jumping on the Facebook bandwagon to develop and extend original Facebook functionality and to tap into the very impressive Facebook user base. A Facebook app developer just sold out to another company for millions (although the story has been subsequently denied, somewhat, by the purchasing company). So things are looking good. Well, somewhat.

I was all about Facebook just 6 months ago. To me, they could do no wrong. Everything they had released seemed to be cleverly conceived and designed, they had their priorities straight (extensive privacy controls, logical design, etc.) When the Facebook developer API came along, I was tentatively positive about it. Yeah, no one wants to deal with crap like auto-loading music or flashing graphics or - gasp! - handing design sense to the users, since the common man's design sense is unmatched in its stupidity. Just look at MySpace.

I think Facebook has a novel idea. Spread the wealth; let others expand upon your brilliant service, let people fill niches you don't want, focus on building a great platform for others. And for me, this suddenly became a very Apple vs. Microsoft situation.

Facebook, to me, had been very Apple. I say that in an ideological sense-- they anticipated my needs, knew what I wanted to see and know, and sent the whole thing to me in such a polished and clever package. Simple, thought out, and what I wanted. At the risk of bringing up some tentative OS arguments, I'd say this resembles Apple. Apple has always been proclaimed to be the one who understands the user, understands what they want, and sometimes uses their own power to force concepts and ideas upon the user in striving towards a certain idea in how things should be done. This is the superior way of doing things if you can trust the company to react to the market, to continue to anticipate your needs, and to just excel. If they don't, you're kinda screwed.

Microsoft, on the other hand, has earned its billions upon billions by building a platform that lets others extend themselves off of. The Lisa and original Macintosh are the antithesis: initially fairly difficult for third parties to code for, it paved the way for Microsoft's technology to eventually dominate. Based on this, I wonder how the Microsoft-esque way of doing things, by building a platform rather than a product, will impact users.

The thing that drove the point home for me was when Facebook dropped their class functionality from the site. It wasn't used as extensively as other functionality, but was still used enough to be worthwhile. You'd add your details about classes you're taking each semester and then you could click to see who else is taking that class. It works great in trying to see if you have any friends taking the same class as you, for example. Facebook dropped this a few weeks ago in favor of letting developers handle it on the API. So what happens now? Well, now we have competition. But I'm not sure competition is a good thing in this case.

Even on the Facebook developer blog they didn't mention a replacement- they mentioned two replacements. By this point I'm sure more have entered the market, too. This is a case where having more apps doing the same core functionality is completely self-defeating. Now I have none of my friends using the built-in Facebook app, five percent of my friends using Facebook classroom app A, three percent using Facebook app B, and one percent using Facebook apps C through F. The result? I can't tell who's taking a class with me unless I want to add seven apps to my account.

It's not always the case -- there are apps that are more visual where my friends don't need to install them to see a benefit -- but I think it's a conflict that will become more and more apparent as we go on. Part of the reason Facebook grew in popularity was that it offered so much in such an attractive package. If you split that into hundreds and thousands of mini-apps, do you lose out on the initial appeal of Facebook? From the looks of it, yes.

I think Facebook is going to drift more towards looking like MySpace and less like Facebook. This will alienate the core group of early adopters, namely college students, who used it as a communication medium. The result? Probably more traffic and more criticisms for Facebook.

At this point, I'm starting to wonder if we're going to see a new network start experiencing a meteoric rise in popularity. With Facebook diluting itself, perhaps it's time for a more friend-centric service to gain a footing.