Valleywag
When we ran screenshots of Facebook's new profile pages back in late February, what you saw was a classic Mark Zuckerberg production. A source close to Facebook tells us the profile redesign was Zuckerberg's pet project, his baby. Well, that baby is dead.
At the very least, it's no longer a Mark Zuckerberg production. The widgetmakers have taken it over. Large Facebook-application developers — VC darlings like Slide, RockYou and Zynga which have thrived on Facebook's platform since it launched last May — panicked when they saw Zuckerberg's plans. And, perhaps because Google's rival app platform, OpenSocial, gave them leverage, the widgetmakers' collective kiboshed Zuckerberg's plan to launch the redesigned profiles in April. They wanted to see changes first. And now, we hear, they got them. Zuckerberg and his team are already "improving the design to have less radical implications for developers," one tells us.
Back when the Facebook platform launched, reporters compared Zuckerberg to Bill Gates. Gates ruled programmers who wrote applications for his Windows platform with such an iron fist that Europe's courts still aren't over it. But how often did third-party software makers push Gates into making Windows the way they wanted it? By contrast, Zuckerberg is hardly putting the "eek" in his ecosystem.
Comments
This has so many bad implications for facebook.
* The advantage walled gardens have is being able to enforce an environment. Facebook losing control of its enforced tastefulness leaves it with nothing but market share.
* The only value in add-on features that do nothing is in low-cost pageviews. Facebook must be profiting from apps, and not just by a relatively small amount--its profits aren't high, so this is a desperate way to make money.
* Forget the Zuck losing control of Facebook--that's probably a good thing--the problem is that people who depend on Facebook to operate a business have gained a significant amount of control over Facebook. For Facebook to remain relevant, it will have to evolve (it is a fad product, after all). The roadblock will be the app developers and other platforms happy/desperate to poach apps and users.
@sample032: ... remain?
...and why is it a bad thing that I still haven't joined the Facebook bandwagon?
Curse you for not seeing the genius in Zuckerberg's action. Zuckerberg, to me, is much like a Roman emperor. Pompous, filled with hubris, and destined to fall.
Imagine if the Vista sidebar widget makers controlled Windows. Imagine if the only source of revenue in Windows were sidebar widgets.
Problem is you kids don't see the power of facebook.
@Norcross:
It's a good thing(tm).
We are talking about you there and we don't want you to listen in.
It's the facebook economy.
The free facebook market.
Gotta compete in Zuck's little ecosystem.
Like the 12 year old who had a PHP-nuke, forced kids to register for his forum to make any use of the site.
Again, juvenile economics.
Zuck: Go back to watching AMV's
@Norcross: It is not a bad thing... it just proves you have no acne. Outside of here, you and I are pretty normal in failing to follow tweeners.
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