The Business Web 2.0
As CEO of business-based social networking site WeCanDo.BIZ, read my take on the role Web 2.0 technologies can play helping businesses to grow.
Wednesday 28 May 2008, 9:00 AM
Facebook confused about the way forward
Have a number of recent announcements reduced Facebook's usefulness to members and also derailed any prospects of realising its estimated value?
To date, you cannot deny Facebook's rise has meteoric. From a social network for Harvard students, the past 4 years have seen it grow to 70 million visitors a month with members from across the globe. It reached a peak last year with Microsoft paying $246 million for a stake of just 1.6%, valuing the company at $15 billion.
But a number of recent moves have shown the future to be less rosy for the Web 2.0 hero.
With Microsoft having failed in its efforts to acquire Yahoo! (for now at least), it was rumoured that our all dominant friends in Redmond had called Facebook to discuss increasing their investment. They were reportedly told that Facebook wasn't for sale (although I think any businessperson worth their salt would probably say yes to a $15 billion valuation on a turnover of $300 million annually in the current economic gloom).
This week, Facebook has announced that the Facebook Platform they revealed last year -- essentially a platform for developers to build those cruddy applications that drive you mad -- is soon to go Open Source.
Now to me this has a few important implications for Facebook moving forward and none of them is positive. Number 1 is that it will be yet easier for third party developers to build and deploy applications that clutter the experience for users and generate more spam, possible contributors to a recent dip in visitor numbers. Secondly, this seems to potentially undo the good expected from an interface redesign that Facebook has been promising for a few weeks now and which was aimed at going back to the "clean" Facebook appearance of old, to enhance the user experience. Thirdly, how attractive is a company with an Open Source platform for others to exploit to new investors, especially notorious enemy of the Open Source state Microsoft.
Facebook has recently been back out to the markets with cap in hand looking for additionaly investment to reinforce its infrastructure ($1 billion on new hardware - WOW!), but now that it would seem most of that will go towards building servers for other companies to use for free with no clear return for Facebook in the whole thing, you have to wonder what the future Grand Plan is.
Ian Hendry
WeCanDo.BIZ
http://www.wecando.biz
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