For the under 25 crowd most of their “conversations” start on Facebook. Connect is a great feature that allows sites to become part of the conversation. Read up on it and embrace the new world.

1. Facebook made a bad strategic decision when they launched their app platform, and not require developers to pay to be part of the FB Platform. This (in my mind) was the key to their potential revenue model. This is why they changed their GUI – to minimize the presence of the 3rd party apps. They are trying to slowly go back to having control and offering the “most” value – and throw their app developers under the bus.

2. Now, they are hesitant to expand FB connect, because they don’t want to allow 3rd parties to get all the benefit, and potentially carve out more revenue that FB can own.

Mark my words – over the next year, you will begin to see the so-called “open” platform pitch – will become much more driven by need for FB to drive revenue, and “partners’ will fade, and FB will try to retract the vision and promises they have sold us over the last few years.

Specially in case of connectedweddings and indiegogo it ends up as facebook apps where as Govit and globalgrind seems like been implemented correctly. They are listed in external website in my apps list. Well I could not find anything for mybarackobama.com.

Guess the implementation is being a big hurdle here. I think thats the reason for it to get known. Anyone at facebook reading this….

I don’t know about you, but I really don’t like developing a tool that might just be worthless and depending on another partys approval.

All approval systems are really bad. Windows, the web etc wouldn’t be so rich in content if there would’ve been an approval system. I know Apple is using this for the IPhone, and I don’t like that system either.

I can’t wait for OpenSocial and Android to grow!

My 2 cents worth, Facebook has to embrace 3rd party developers as its been proven time and time again that a single company can not provide the best products/services in every genre. Main reason why PCs dominated even though Apple had a superior product. And why the iPhone with its strong app dev following will continue its success even though it’ll have many new competitors.

Facebook is most likely having internal debates on how to walk this fine line of open platform vs chore features, but someone has to take charge and publicly state that its imperative for FB’s success to always provide a fair platform for 3rd parties. For example our Facebook app Birthday Calendar with 9M users is the top app in its genre. However, we don’t enjoy the same delivery/communication channels that Facebook enjoys for its own virtual gifts. At some point this unfair advantage will frustrate enough developers and they’ll start looking elsewhere to focus their efforts.

So what will probably happen is similar to Microsoft, Facebook will have to find its “Office” cash cow. They should publicly annouce present & future core products and leave everything else alone. One big difference to note is that “cash” portion of cash cow. MS charges for their suite, but FB will most likely never be able to do that. Open platform and business greed have never mixed well. Lets see if FB will prove it wrong! I guess, we’ll just have to go back to “only time will tell!”.

Nasser G. – BigDates Solutions

Momma
feature blogger at Engineer a Debt Free Life
http://engineer...e.blogspot.com/