Why Facebook Platform is Risky Business
Is Facebook really the model way to take product to platform in order to “give back to the Internet”?
The more Facebook’s Dave Morin acts like Matt Cutts, the more Mark Zuckerberg’s F8 acts life a Facebook page view pusher, not the ecumenical Web platform it was hyped to be.
Just as Webmasters shutter before Cutts as he bestows–or doesn’t–Google PageRank love, Facebook Developers brace for when Morin ”shifts” how applications are ranked in the application directory.
Morin’s latest “engagement” spiel tells applications what they must do if they are to gain any Facebook love: Drive Facebook’s numbers, such as:
Canvas page views,
Link clicks in FBML,
Mock-ajax form submision,
Clock-to-play Flash.
In Facebook speak, F8 is only looking for a win-win: “user engagement and utitlity.”
The Facebook-centric “engagment” measure of “utility,” however, penalizes Applications that may actually provide the most user utility of all, but nevertheless yield little for Facebook in terms of daily measureable user activity.
Lending Club, case in point. A Facebooker getting a $1000 loan at below market rates is of extremely hgh utiiity, but, once obtained, does not necessarily result in daily “engagement” with the Lending Club app.
Contrary to LinkedIn, which measures user utility by how fast members accomplish their professional goals at the site, Facebook is interested in two things: 1) Retaining users within its closed Intranet for as long as humanly possible and 2) Spurring users to transact at Facebook as much as humanly possible, i.e., poke, click, share…non-stop.
F8 may look like a free-ride, but it is not risk-free and is designed to support the long-term business plan of Mark Zuckerberg alone.
Just as millions upon millions of Web pages vie to obtain the one single avaible “free” number one slot for given Google SERPs, thousands of developers may strive to hit the “free’ F8 jackpot.
Google AdWords makes billions because free Google love is generally not forthcoming. The free F8 lottery is also an elusive game.
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