Embeds vs. APIs, User Control vs. Developer Control

I’ve been holding off on contributing my two cents on Facebook’s API until I could properly digest the ramifications. 

At this point, I still don’t know what to make of it.  The few Facebook applications that I’ve played around with so far are pretty lousy.  The iLike application for Facebook, one of my favorite social media sites and the run away early winner in the Facebook distribution sweepstakes, is a shadow of its destination site.  None of the functionality that I enjoy on iLike is available, there appears to be no way to synch my iLike account with my Facebook / iLike account, and the only thing that it appears to do is to list snippets of songs that I explicitly indicate.  Ugh.

Widgetbox, the exceedingly slick and user friendly widget platform, is anything but slick and user friendly in its Facebook implementation.  I’m unable to move my Widgetbox widgets to my sidebar, every widget that I post is announced as “Lawrence has posted a video,” I have to hit a play button to interact with any Widgetbox widget, and there only seems to be a fraction of the overall Widgetbox gallery available on Facebook.

(Note: I’m holding out hope that Widgetbox will emerge as a backdoor into Facebook for widget publishers who want to build one version of their widget and publish it everywhere)

I know it’s still early, and things will almost certainly get better.  I also understand the balancing act that widget publishers need to manage between getting something out the door, and making it perfect.  I also suspect that the Facebook API itself may be behind the watered down nature of these Facebook specific apps.

But what I don’t understand is all the MySpace bashing that has accompanied the Facebook analysis.  Josh Kopelman is particularly binary in his analysis:

Think about it.  If you ran a venture-backed company and had to decide whether you wanted to focus your effort on:  (a) a property that welcomed you in and let you keep 100% of the revenue you generate or (b) a company with a vague policy that doesn’t let you generate any revenue, which would you choose?  I don’t think it’s even a decision.  It’s an IQ test.

Maybe I’m IQ challenged, but if I ran a venture backed company, I’d probably take a read through Facebook’s TOS before focusing my efforts on building a Facebook dependent business. 

What Josh misses, I think, is that if you build a widget for MySpace it will also work on blogs, and hundreds of other niche social networks that accept html embeds.  If you build a widget for Facebook, it will work on Facebook.

Put another way, if I publish a Flash widget tomorrow and make the embed code available, any of MySpace’s 50M or so active users will be able to place that widget on their profile page.  How does this compare to Facebook?  With Facebook, I have to make a version of the widget that works with MySpace, Friendster, Blogs, and every other site that accepts embed code, and then I have to make (apparently) a stripped down, bare bones version using Facebook’s proprietary language that will work only on Facebook.  How exactly is this an open platform? 

But I think my core unease with Facebook’s approach comes down to this: Facebook’s social operating system seems to swing the pendulum of publishing power away from the user, and back to the developers.  Embed codes are manageable by non-programmers, APIs are not. 

A while back, Hooman Radfar wrote a great post on how he saw the Web evolving towards Web 3.0.  In my response to Hooman, I say the following:

You say:

Web 1.0 = Web as pervasive publication mechanism

Web 2.0 = Web as a platform, atomized content

Web 3.0 = Web as remixer

Through my user generated content blinders, I’ve been thinking of the progression as this:

Web 1.0 = Site owners code and publish, users consume

Web 2.0 = Site owners code and publish, users consume and publish

Web 3.0 = Site owners code and publish, users consume, publish, and code

By giving site users access to the html on their profile pages, MySpace gave us a glimpse of what the web might look like when users become coders.

Facebook, it seems, has rejected this vision and has institutionalized developer control of its property for the foreseeable future.

Forgive me for being a little disappointed.

Comments

[Marco Hansell]

Just got finished combing through the TOS, that is some pretty heavy stuff. In summary it says Facebook has the right to do any and all things to profit from your business, compete with your business, or eliminate your business.

Thanks for the heads up. I had been so caught up in the excitement of the platform that I failed to review the TOS.

I think the most alarming clause is:

"You understand and agree that Developer Provided Content that is displayed on the Facebook Site may continue to appear on the Facebook Site, even after you have terminated access to your Facebook Platform Application or terminated this Agreement, as such Developer Provided Content may have been incorporated into user profiles, news feeds or other features, and that such usage may continue indefinitely."

There's so much in this agreement that lends itself to even worse terms than Myspace. To Facebook's credit, if I were them I wouldn't want to limit myself in the space of widget/API monetization, being that its so unclear exactly where and how money will come...but at the same time telling developers that you can use their source code to "modify" their applications, develop competing applications, or even kick you off the site and still keep your application running...WOW. That's ballsy, to say the least.

[lawrence]

Yes, that decision not to allow developers to remove their apps is pretty old school. There seems to have been an overwhelming urge by a number of prominent bloggers to create a villain (MySpace), and a knight on a white horse (Facebook). I don't think the facts support this. Both are big companies trying to protect their turf, and create the biggest returns possible to their shareholders. I don't see Facebook as the "anti-MySpace" at all.