Insider Chatter by Donna Bogatin

Are the Web’s luminaries wrong about Facebook after all? Is Mark Zuckerberg ruling an open, benevolent F8 as promised, or does the Facebook lure lead to but golden Web handcuffs?

Is it really prudent for the Web to capitulate to Facebook, as the Internet’s “court jester,” aka Esther Dyson, advised at the Web 2.0 NY conference earlier this month. Dyson has seen the Web’s future and it is a big “F,” so just develop for Facebook, Dyson declared:

“Throw out your development, go use Facebook.” WHY, though? It doesn’t matter if you are “better,” what matters is that you are “standard,” Dyson asserted.

A Facebook-only “standard,” that is, as the Web world is now beginning to realize: The vaunted “open” Facebook is not so open after all. What’s more, what’s good for Facebook, is not necessarily good for third-party F8 developers.

Is Facebook the new AOL then? F8 IS dangling a large, registered, “proprietary” user base before developers AND requiring developer acquiescence to the Facebook.

Nevertheless Marc Andreessen lambasts against what is actually an overdue real-world analyisis of what F8 is, and what it isn’t.

Andreessen says “Let’s take a look at the points made by our friends”:

“Unimpressive apps” — “for users, the novelty has worn off” the first set of Facebook apps. My response: five f______ weeks! We haven’t even begun to see the interesting apps on Facebook yet.

“Illusory popularity” — “it’s not clear” that “users” will “stick” with apps. My response: five f______ weeks! We don’t have the slightest idea yet how Facebook users six months from now, a year from now, two years from now are going to react to, adopt, stick with, and/or abandon apps. How can we — we don’t even know what those apps will be yet!

“Disappointing numbers” — “most of the attention is hogged by the most popular apps, and those tend to be the ones present at launch”. My response: five f______ weeks! Any new app on Facebook that wasn’t present at launch by definition can have only been in market for a max of about five weeks — that isn’t enough time to draw any conclusions about numbers.

Andreessen’s core thesis is that at just five weeks out of the F8 gate, it is folly to suggest that F8 may not be all it is cracked up to be.

WHY then did Andreessen HIMSELF confirm to the world just THREE weeks out of the F8 gate that Facebook has already achieved “one of the most sigificant milestones in the technology industry in this decade.”

Andreessen cries “backlash” of the present real world analysis of F8 in all its NOT so glory, even though he is well aware that Facebook’s “openness” is highly qualified, by Facebook. He wrote of Facebook’s demands that “applications must conform to Facebook guidelines for appearance and content or they are disallowed”:

Facebook retains much tighter control of the overall user experience.

Facebook itself is not reprogrammable — Facebook’s own code and functionality remains closed and proprietary. You can layer new code and functionality on top of what Facebook’s own programmers have built.

While the Facebook Platform gives developers a lot of capabilities that they never had before, and access to a huge base of enthusiastic users, as a Facebook developer you’re very much living in Facebook’s world — you’re not creating your own world.

Facebook proprietary control and undue influence is even obvious at Andreessen’s own blog! In typical command and control Facebook PR fashion, Facebook management advised Andreessen on THEIR reality of the Facebook world, the Facebook version of it, that is.

YES, despite his glowing (but unproven) endorsement of F8 as the Web’s best and brightest future, Andreessen was deemed by Facebook to be in need of correcting. Why? Because not only in F8, but within the entire Facebook company, it is Facebook rules. PERIOD.

Andreessen dutifully acquiesced to “the folks at Facebook” and ammended his “analysis” of the F8 to correspond to how Facebook wants F8 to be perceived:

In conversations with the folks at Facebook, there are a few clarifications and expansions I’d like to note:

First, my statement that “applications must conform to Facebook guidelines for appearance and content or they are disallowed” is partially but not entirely true. Boxes that contain content from an application on a user’s Facebook profile page must be rendered via FBML and have tight controls over what can be included, particularly the no-Javascript limitation. On the other hand, so-called “canvas” pages — the pages dedicated completely to a specific application, and accessible via the left-hand-side app navigation area, can be rendered either via FBML (which is restrictive), an iframe that can include arbitrary content, or a combination of the two. From an iframe you do pretty much whatever you want, but you don’t get the FBML features.

Note that you are incented to use FBML because that’s the easiest way to achieve integration between your application and Facebook — e.g. to let your app have access to information about the user and her friends. FBML is clearly a good thing; it’s just that when you’re using it, you can’t do certain other things that you’re used to. And, as noted, you are required to use it for content that shows up on users’ profile pages.

Welcome to the real Facebook world of command, control AND golden Web handcuffs.

ALSO: How Facebook IS the Next Google and Craigslist Q & A: Classifieds Community NO ‘Walled Garden’

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN