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Facebook is the new social platform

Fri, June 8th, 2007 by Tom Cochran | 0 comments

Facebook is more than just a social networking site for college kids. It is the vanguard of Web 2.0. It's the new operating system on top of which powerful social web applications will be built. The massively popular Facebook has been reborn as a social operating system.

They recently announced the launch of Facebook Platform at the end of May in a move similar to what Microsoft did in the early 80's, encouraging software developers to build applications on top of their fledgling operating system. Twenty plus years later, Microsoft rules the world of desktop apps. Are we going to see an omnipotent Facebook crushing Yahoo, Microsoft, and Google?

Facebook has 25 million registered users and is growing at a ridiculous rate of 100,000 new users every day, which is the same as adding the population of San Francisco every week. Facebook Platform was launched a little over a week ago and some apps like iLike, Horoscopes, and Movies already have one or two million users. Friendster died a miserable death a long time ago, Rupert Murdoch's purchase of MySpace was a collosal waste of money. Facebook is getting it right, moving social networking sites into the next phase, opening them up as full-scale development platforms. Phil's post at Echoditto about Facebook is right on:

Facebook is moving from Social Networking into a new and different frontier, and can no longer be compared to NewsCorp's baby. What the new platform promises is a sort of "Web 2.1" that takes all of the awesomeness of Web 2.0 and puts it in one place, waters it, and lets it grow into something spectacular. 

Facebook touts deep integration, mass distribution, new opportunity as the three keys for the eventual success of their platform. Deep integration allows the third party apps to reside on arbitrary web servers, built in essentially any programming language, integrating seamlessly with Facebook and the Facebook UI via clean APIs and web services. Application parity makes each application an equal component of a person's Facebook page. Through mass distribution, the little application you built will have the same potential for exposure to 25+ million users as Facebook's own in-house applications. That's a tremendous opportunity for explosive growth with an already existing user base. New opportunity gives companies large and small, as well as individuals, the incentive to build their apps and widgets on Facebook platforms and monetize them as they see fit. If there is an opportunity to make money, people will flock to it. Some ideas will only serve a little niche, a lot of them are going to be terrible, but those that have the right idea and execute it properly, will reap huge rewards.

Is Facebook the new Microsoft? Is Mark Zuckerberg the next Bill Gates? We shall see, but it's interesting to note that they're both Harvard dropouts and both started to taste success early in their twenties. Zuckerberg and Facebook, much like Gates and Microsoft, are really smart to open up and encourage development on the Facebook Platform. It makes Facebook an indispensable foundation on which the next generation of web applications are built.

Facebook Stats (source: Facebook.com)

General Growth

• More than 24 million active users
• More than 100,000 new registrations per day since Jan. 2007
• An average of 3 percent weekly growth since Jan. 2007
• Active users have doubled since Facebook expanded registration in Sept. 2006

User Demographics

• Over 47,000 regional, work-related, collegiate, and high school networks
• More than half of Facebook users are outside of college
• The fastest growing demographic is those 25 years old and older
• Maintain 85 percent market share of 4-year U.S. universities

User Engagement

• Sixth-most trafficked site in the United States*
• More than 40 billion page views per month in May 2007
• More than half of active users return daily
• People spend an average of 20 minutes on the site daily*

Applications

• No. 1 photo sharing application on the web*
• Photo application draws more than twice as much traffic as the next three sites combined*
• More than 1.8 billion photos on the site
• More than 6 million active user groups on the site

International Growth

• Canada has the most users outside of the United States, with more than 2.5 million active users
• The U.K. is the third largest country with more than 1.4 million active users
• Remaining Top 10 countries in order of active users (outside of the U.S., Canada and UK): Norway, Australia, South Africa, Lebanon, Egypt, Sweden and India

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