Yesterday Om Malik discussed a conversation he had with Sarik Weber who’s company had developed a free SMS application on Facebook. Om as well as Sarik were surprised with the relatively low success of the application. Additionally, Om noted that the top SMS application on Facebook were only receiving around 500 active daily users. A quick glance at VOIP applications on the site yields similar results.
For Om, the lack of growth in these applications caused him to question the “viability of Facebook as a communications hub.” I disagree with Om in that Facebook is a communications hub but the only difference is that people communicate differently on the platform. While people use the Facebook based mobile site and Blackberry application, users are simply using the applications to send Facebook messages and update their statuses not leverage other applications.
Is the communication going on via Facebook the same conversation going on via email. While much of it is, most of my business communication still takes place outside of the network. As of now there are very few utility based applications that have been successful at doing anything more than building out existing Facebook features. Offering new communication channels have continuously failed on the platform.
So what will succeed? Right now widgets, games and applications that extend Facebook’s functionality appear to be in the lead. We have yet to see the success of enterprise applications on the Facebook platform. Will robust applications that support productivity ever succeed on the site? I doubt it. Facebook is a tool for productivity. What do you think? Are there any highly useful and highly functional applications that you spend a lot of time on?
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Facebook is a place where people come to play. Its all about entertainment people. Would you open up a word processing kiosk in a bar with all your friends? Om obviously doesn't understand the platform. Productivity apps probably can have a niche on LinkedIn, but not on Facebook.
Comment by Shane Vitarana — April 21, 2008 @ 6:42 am
Facebook is a place where people come to play. Its all about entertainment people. Would you open up a word processing kiosk in a bar with all your friends? Om obviously doesn’t understand the platform. Productivity apps probably can have a niche on LinkedIn, but not on Facebook.
Comment by Shane Vitarana — April 21, 2008 @ 10:42 am
Seems to me that this is more to do with the membership demographics of FACEBOOK. Namely, SMS or text messages have been extensively used in Europe but rarely in US. Also, large number of SMS messages is usually included for free in the mobile plans that people have.
Finally, mobiles are more ubiquitous that laptops and PCs. If you have a SimCard based Nokia model from N-series, you can surf the web, talk, get SMSs, take photos and post them on Flickr, keep notes, have diary and reminders stored, listen to the radio or MP3 songs and lectures, look at GoogleMaps and use the phone as GPRS device.
Now, why would you need to send then SMS from Facebook and by extension your laptop/PC?
A long response to explain why the postulated question is wrong since lack of uptake says nothing about the sommunication capability of Facebook and all about the Facebook as a platform for it!
Comment by Lilly Evans — April 22, 2008 @ 3:55 pm
I don't think any of those walled web application platforms have a future, and I find Facebook apps to be largely useless.
The future is likely going to be portable Javascript gadgets that people can use with many different sites. The gadgets themselves will look like iGoogle gadgets and connect to more full featured sites elsewhere.
In fact, if you look at what's on Facebook to begin with, it's mostly a thin wrapper around feeds or functionality from other sites.
One thing that needs to change radically is the development model for all of these JavaScript things; it's way too cumbersome still to develop for it.
Comment by Mike — April 23, 2008 @ 1:47 am