4 Comments »Less than a week ago I discussed the prospect of a killer feature on Facebook that allows you to differentiate between various categories of your friends. Within days, Facebook added two new API methods to their platform: friends.getLists and friends.getListsMembers. Watch out LinkedIn, Facebook is gunning for you!
While these two new API calls are unreleased, I seriously doubt Facebook would add these to the development sandbox without being near completion. This could signal one of two things: Facebook is adding the killer feature or Facebook is adding a feature similar to Slide’s Top Friends application. If it’s the former, Facebook is certainly aiming to become the single resource for social networking on the web (as they should be). If the latter, this would be a direct strike against Slide, in turn creating a statement for developers: don’t develop a utility application that becomes enormously popular. If you do, Facebook will take it and add it to their main features.
One thing is for sure though: Facebook is rapidly expanding their site’s feature set on a regular basis. This is going to keep the users coming back as the company continues to support their position that their number one priority is the users. I’m excited to see what this new feature turns out to be!
[Via]
“If the latter, this would be a direct strike against Slide, in turn creating a statement for developers: don’t develop a utility application that becomes enormously popular. If you do, Facebook will take it and add it to their main features.”
I think this just another reason why ultimately Facebook’s closed eco-system won’t work. Facebook’s ability to quickly make an app like yours and steal your thunder is too much of a disincentive to start developing on their platform.
It causes me to have that much more respect for Twitter, which is essentially just like Facebook Statuses, but is seeing great success independent of Facebook.
“If the latter, this would be a direct strike against Slide, in turn creating a statement for developers: don’t develop a utility application that becomes enormously popular. If you do, Facebook will take it and add it to their main features.”
I think this just another reason why ultimately Facebook’s closed eco-system won’t work. Facebook’s ability to quickly make an app like yours and steal your thunder is too much of a disincentive to start developing on their platform.
It causes me to have that much more respect for Twitter, which is essentially just like Facebook Statuses, but is seeing great success independent of Facebook.
[...] Will Facebook soon allow me to export my network? | The Unofficial Facebook Blog As LinkedIn and Plaxo already let me export my list of contacts, is Facebook heading that way soon? The addition of some code in their API “sandbox” suggests they may be adding it soon. (tags: facebook socialnetworks) permalink | categories: All other | Time posted: 11:30 pm on Thursday, August 30th, 2007 [...]
[...] as well as their highly inefficient messaging system. Once they make those changes (and launch their killer feature) Facebook may just become the next $100 billion web company. I guess this wasn’t really a [...]