Web Entrepreneur William Kasel

Social Media is obviously the driving force behind web 2.0, and how much better of a way to embrace social content than to open your site to developers? It goes back to the original Fast Company article on Ning, and the Viral Expansion Loop. Get members of the social graph to make something, that makes the parent node to the other nodes (people). Obviously, Facebook did this with their developers platform, and It has paid off well for them, and been highly embraced.

I have always been, and still remain the biggest proponent of the the developers platform, but it seems like the buzz is dying, and the community is being filled with garbage — usually clones, and over-simplified apps. One suggestion, and one that I always believed in, was the social graph allows good things to bubble to the top, in sort of a democratic way. But, think about first mover advantage, with companies such as RockYou, and Slide. They were able to jump in before there were anti-invite groups started to shut down the application platform all together.

The simple truth is the platofrm has been abused, and Facbook is suffering. Their grand idea is slowly slipping to commonplace. What does Facebook need? I don’t know. If they start cutting apps, then there would be an uprise, but something needs to be done. I am glad to see they are cracking down on the big dogs.

Maybe facebooks new redesign will help stop the mess facebook has with the applications, but with that set to launch July 16th, I wouldn’t expect much.