• by Joe Marchese , May 29, 2007

Facebook has fired the starting gun signaling the race to social media's next evolution, gaining a significant edge in the race. The open call is for droves of driven, innovative and funded entrepreneurs to develop feature sets and functionality to improve the quality of Facebook life, rather than focusing their collective efforts on building Facebook competitors. I guess that's the nice thing about being the one that fires the starting gun; you can give yourself a nice head start. While Facebook's competitors are busy looking for ways to take advantage of the awesome power granted to them by being the hub of people's digital social lives, Facebook has begun to look for ways to live up to the responsibility that accompanies the power granted it. Facebook knows it can't fulfill its role as the Internet generation's social media OS alone. In essence Facebook is asking not what its community can do for Facebook, but what Facebook can do for its community.

By formally recognizing the role of third-party developers in the Facebook ecosystem, the company exponentially grows its research and development. Josh Kopelman spells it out nicely by putting some figures to it here. And by granting those vendors who are improving the lives of Facebook users the right to profit from their work, Facebook will get to work directly with those solving the issues of social media monetization. The thought leaders from advertisers and agencies will get the opportunity to collaborate with social media application and content developers, all within the Facebook ecosystem. Therefore, not only has Facebook created a seemingly endless virtual budget to research features and functionality for its community, the company has also created an equally endless virtual budget for the research and development of social media monetization methods. Eventually Facebook will be there to benefit when its partners crack various pieces of the social media monetization code. In the end, Facebook's open strategy will likely lead to it reaching its monetization potential long before those social networks that remain closed off in their search for (ironically) monetization.

Many other social media platforms will follow Facebook's lead by attempting to evolve into social media operating systems for their users. In fact, I strongly believe that If MySpace can find its tollbooth, it could quickly turn the game inside-out by not only allowing vendors in, but by actually helping them monetize. As social media players shift strategies, the questions advertisers have to ask themselves include: What are we as advertisers doing to match the pace of change in social media? How can advertising support the open social media ecosystem? What value can our advertising creative and our brands' social currency add to the social media ecosystem?

Facebook is doing its part, but the right strategy doesn't guarantee success. In order for Facebook's user-centric strategy to succeed, the company needs its advertising partners to share its user-centric vision. Just because Facebook isn't setting a price on admission doesn't mean its users won't set their own price. When was the last time you really set aside marketing goals for a second (I promise we will come back to them) and turned your team loose to figure out how they would improve the life of those social media publishers and consumers that are so sought after? When was the last time you, like Facebook, asked your staff not what social media communities can do for your brand -- but what your brand can do for social media communities? Advertisers need to start with this question and work backward to marketing goals. Providing value to social media communities will be the new cost to distribute marketing messages in the social media OS. It's a cost that Facebook is deferring to its users to collect on.