I just answered a question on a similar topic over at Techdirt’s Insight Community. Then Randy’s commentary over at the RSS Blog prompted blog post from me. I was very tempted to stay out of the debate because I know it is going to grow into the Social Network as a Platform idea which is just going to turn into a slippery slope.

Here’s the deal - the internet is an inherently social network. Thus, we’ve been building on ’social networks’ as a platform since the inception of the web (forums, newsgroups, file sharing, etc). Now back to the issue at hand…

Now Facebook is providing a ‘developer platform‘ which simply allows developers to create applications to live inside Facebook. This is different than Facebook’s API which allows developers to build applications external of Facebook but using its data.

As an entreprenuer/web developer I see some value in creating applications that use Faceboook’s API but that depends on the circumstance. You don’t want to waste time integrating it just because of a fad. My recommendation is to build your application first and integrate later.

Secondly I would never build an application on the Facebook platform for all the reasons that Randy mentioned in his post. I don’t understand why you would specifically target a single web site as a platform - excluding any potential growth beyond that specific network.

From the RSS Blog:

“We already have an API for widgets, it’s called HTML. We’ve been embedding widgets in MySpace for years using HTML. Why does Facebook need a proprietary widgets API? It’s called lock-in. A walled garden. The work you do on your Facebook widget doesn’t port to other social platforms. In this case, platform means proprietary. When the euforia fades, just home many $billions are going to get spent by 3rd parties to better the Facebook platform? This is nuts!”

What do you think?

Tags: Facebook, API, Platform