This is a quick article before I head out for the weekend. I’ll be back next week to edit this post and expound more on Facebook’s revolutionary development. I will also show how businesses and entrepreneurs will be able to make money today using F8.
Microsoft and Amazon just crowned Facebook as the new Google.
Facebook signed Amazon and Microsoft to build web applications inside Facebook. Not the other way around. Microsoft has spent years defending what they saw as the technology battle for their continued reign: Linux vs. Windows. Amazon’s vision of software as a service blind-sided Microsoft by shifting the argument online and clearly explaining to the rest of the industry that no one cares about Linux vs. Windows in the new economy. Microsoft agreed 5 years too late. Google recently emerged as a major player and an Internet darling by out-executing both Amazon and Microsoft and showing that “he who builds the most scalable infrastructure using commodity hardware” wins. However, to this day Google has not produced a video sharing or E-commerce site which gains the same traction and mindshare as their competitors. Want to find out whether the new VP of Marketing spent four years paying tuition by slinking around a stripper pole? Google. Need a new washing machine, new career, new iPod, new bowling partner? Not Google. In a few months, Facebook’s social network combined with deeply integrated applications will provide and service both types of queries.
Facebook has single handedly revolutionized the Internet and delivered web 3.0: software as a service (SaaS) combined with social networking as a generic platform.
With the birth (read: commercial exploitation) of the Internet in the early 90s nearly every company and entrepreneur on the planet started strategizing and scheming about how to make money on the Internet. Yet, very few companies figured out how to actually make money. The overblown speculation ended with the 1999 market meltdown. Companies realized they couldn’t slap their existing business model directly onto the web. The RIAA is probably the best example of a company or organization demonstrating that regression and litigation are a viable alternative for a company that lacks the insight to evolve. Their long term prospects? What happens when they run out of customers to demand payment for a civil violation of copyrights? Microsoft is another example of a company recently spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) about patent infringement (note: they are still fighting the Linux vs. Windows battle which earlier I showed how Amazon, Google, and now Facebook prove it’s not even relevant). To capitalize on the opportunity of the Internet, companies are having to forego traditional modes of business and discover new ways of operating their businesses online. Apple? Yes, they get it, but they are evolving into a media and cell phone company. Microsoft has been replaced by Comcast and Cingular as Apple’s foremost competitors. Back to SaaS: software as a service is what Google, Amazon, and Microsoft have spent millions of dollars trying to produce. Amazon has led the SaaS initiatives by delivering information and services through “pipes” or APIs calls which let others build interfaces and consume data or leverage Amazon’s transaction engine. Yahoo has shown some serious promise in understanding what web 3.0 will be by investing and buying companies who were both building pipelines and employing features which are social network centric. Del.icio.us, Flickr, and Yahoo Pipes combine software as a service (SaaS) and social networking. Yet, these applications still provide specific functionality to a niche and/or lack being a generic platform which other companies can use no matter what their business model might be. Facebook’s F8 platform is both a service through an API and an interface and a social network that has this critical generic quality that any company, anywhere, with any business model can tap into. Oil and gas industry? New recruits, consumer awareness programs. Krispy Kreme donuts? Brand development and product distribution. MyPunchbowl.com? They can plug their application directly into the interface replacing Facebook’s event system entirely. Any product you can think of has an opportunity with Facebook. I can’t say the same thing about Google, Microsoft, or Amazon. Facebook has overnight become the most important company on the Internet by delivering web 3.0.
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Great write up. I have been trying to tell people for some time the power of Facebook. Those who are not users fail to understand it, and dismiss it as just another social networking site, to the point that the label had become a stigma. Hence Zuckerbergs insistence that it is a social utility. I completely agree with him.