• by dave.b , Max Kalehoff , June 15, 2007

Have you noticed a massive surge on Facebook lately, since it opened up itself up to everyone outside of .edu? I have -- and I bet that other social networks are now scrambling to respond, especially in light of Facebook's opening of its API. That has released the floodgates of partner enhancements, add-ons and functionality, to integrate a myriad other data services and social networks deep within and beyond the core Facebook platform.

And each of these individual and distributed advancements has one common theme: the inherent tendency to spread virally, luring people back into the network. For example, I have Twitter syncing with my blog, as well as my Facebook profile; I can update Twitter on any one of those three platforms, and all three will update instantaneously, encouraging tighter integration with my disparate networks.(As a metrics guy, I'm extremely intrigued by the massive amounts of transactional and personal meta data being created behind the scenes -- very compelling!)

Being a newbie on Facebook, I found it striking that the site is designed for a better user experience -- versus the current publisher system that rewards page views and ad impressions. I'm all for monetizing and advertising, but many social networks have suffered terribly from page-view addiction, resulting in near-intolerable user experiences.

While advertising on consumer-generated media platforms is still in its infancy, the advertising on Facebook - for me - seems pleasantly subtle and, fortunately, not risqué or pornographic (even though I exposed my 18-34 male status to the Facebook profile database). Moreover, I've yet to be spammed; I've only been bombarded by genuine friends and contacts, nearly 100 of them in the last day or so.

Beyond my initial observations of Facebook, what makes it tick? As Jeff Jarvis recently noted: "...a powerful newspaper publisher beseeched Mark Zuckerberg, the young founder of the hugely successful social network Facebook, for advice on how he could build and own his community. The famously laconic Zuckerberg replied "You can't." Zuckerberg went on to explain that communities already exist and the question these magnates should ask instead is how they can help them to do what they want to do. Zuckerberg's prescription was 'elegant organization.'"

Jarvis is correct about enabling people in an elegant, organized fashion. But Seth Goldstein considers what's at stake in Facebook's success as a social operating system, or platform, well into the future. He notes three axioms deeply inherent in two of the most successful digital media platforms, Microsoft Windows and Google:

1. Wide distribution
2. Application developers making money
3. Good tools

Seth then considers Facebook:

1. Wide distribution? YES
2. Application developers making money? NO (not yet)
3. Good tools? YES

Seth's conclusion: "the question for establishing Facebook's value as a platform is no longer whether Facebook itself can make money but whether its developers can do so."

I think that eventually will happen, though it will take some time to figure out the right model. It could be advertising, but also could be something else. But it will happen, for the concentration and impact of human attention is too great.

What do you think?