Via SAI, Lookery CEO Scott Rafer is claiming that Facebook’s latest redesign will effectively kill the Facebook Platform. He’s not entirely wrong; many popular Facebook apps will die.
But this isn’t the the end for the Facebook Platform. It’s actually just the beginning.
The redesign has fundamentally changed the way people utilize Facebook apps, which are no longer featured prominently on users’ profiles. To access them, a user must click the applications tab, or open them via the toolbar on the bottom of the page. With these increased costs, users will need greater incentives to use applications. Like on a traditional desktop operating system, a Facebook app will need to provide real value in order to become relevant.
Because of this shift, we may see less apps, but the ones that remain will likely be far more useful. This could include an office suite (like Zoho or Google Docs), a video chat center, or existing apps that let users share media (i.e. iLike). Apps will become less about adding “cool stuff” to your profile, and more about providing real value to your network (and in turn back to yourself).
In the early 1980s, Atari dominated the small, but established, home video game market with a system that offered a flood of cheap and simple games. Five years later, as Atari and the industry was nearing collapse, an upstart video game maker brought out a new system with a new business model: make the barriers for game developers high, so that only quality games make it into the consumers’ hands. In doing so, Nintendo created a whole new industry, bringing quality video games to the masses.
Whether it’s entertainment, or productivity, Facebook’s redesign raises the bar for application developers. In doing so, Facebook isn’t killing its platform, it’s making it infinitely more useful.
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