As a free-spirited Internet enthusiast, I really like what Facebook has done in opening up its system to third party apps. Yesterday I noticed a Flickr photo sharing app was made available (see it here).
Flickr is very popular. Lots of people have already uploaded their photos to Flickr. So making it easy to put my Flickr photos into my Facebook pages is a good thing for me, the user. It’s good for Flickr as it makes the tool more useful to Facebook users; and it’s good for Facebook as it makes that system easier to use too.
Photos are one of the most popular features inside social nets, and drive lots of user activity (and a lot of value)…as we saw when Myspace bought Photobucket (story here) for $250 million. To my knowledge, Photobucket wasn’t really making any money by giving away its free photo storage service. But Photobucket grew to a massive scale by giving away its services and it became indispensible to Myspace.
Best of all, neither Flickr nor Facebook did any additional work to make this connection. The Facebook / Flickr app was developed by this guy.
We’re trying to open up too.
Even as we prepare to reveal v1.0 of mycolts.net to the public, we’re working on v.1.1, which will include ways for content partners to push content into our system via xml / rss. We don’t plan to offer an open API as Facebook has done. We have in mind making deals with local media companies, sponsors, and other third party content producers (like games and fantasy sports), but in then end, content partners can be “3rd party apps” and they can be individual members of the community, so we do see the need to open our system at some point - or at least to some extent.
Will we ever be “free”?
Despite the pot of gold Photobucket found at the end of its rainbow, I’m still not sure how we’ll convince our bosses that “free” is any kind of a business strategy. It’s seen as too risky and it goes totally against the grain of the way we’re used to doing things (people pay us). In a way, starting a business and giving away your product is a bit of a reckless plan. It kinda reminds me of that seen from Ghost busters when Akroyd says to Murray, “…GET ‘EM?! That’s you PLAN??!!”
It’s the semantic web that everyone keeps poo-pooing but it’s coming to reality. Many people will stick with applications that they like BUT they’ll add bits and pieces from other applications to it. It’s all about the integration!!!