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SUMMARY
The Dawn of Social Computing
- Facebook Platform description
- Platform API
- Mass distribution function
- Monetisation
- Strengths and Weaknesses
- Market Implications
The first part of this report explains what Facebook Platform is and what it
offers to developers, service providers and brands. Particular attention is
paid to the platform's role as a new, super-efficient distribution channel for
digital content and services.
The report then explains how Facebook has managed to greatly improve the
efficiency of a conventional viral distribution process throughout a social
graph by cleverly embedding several 'viral booster' mechanisms deep inside the
user experience. The report then explains why and how others can benefit from
this effect by re-engineering their own social graphs.
The report next identifies four major limitations of Facebook Platform by
analysing the gap between what the platform currently offers and market demand
that will increasingly come from developers, niche social networking sites,
internet websites that include social networking features and others whose
businesses are based on social graphs.
Next, the report explains why and how this demand would be best fulfilled by a
new platform for 'social computing' that worked across multiple social
networking platforms, like those offered by Facebook and MySpace, and
different types of social data. The report explains why Facebook and MySpace
are unlikely to be able to perform this role themselves.
The report concludes by examining some of the implications of an open social computing platform by considering:
- The role of service innovation within a service provider;
- The resilience of the internet portal model;
- The emergence of P2P-based social graphs;
- Impact on the distribution of digital content;
- Mobile service development and mobile operator portals;
- Facebook's emergence as a replacement for the web browser.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Facebook Platform
- Application Programming Interface (API)
- Mass Distribution Function
- Conventional Viral Distribution Process
- Viral Distribution within the Facebook Platform
- Key Point: Opportunity
- Monetisation Environment
Limitations
- Proprietary
- Current Reality: Incompatible Platforms
- Market Requirement: Platform Independence
- Platform Licensing
- Current Reality: Facebook Platform not Licensable
- Market Requirement: Licensable Platform
- Weak on Social Data
- Market Dynamics
- New Growth: Emerging Social Networking Markets
- Limits to Growth: Facebook
- Saturation of the Application Market: User Overload
- New Distribution Channel, but Limitations
Towards a Common Platform
- Market Demand
- Analogy: Desktop Operating Systems
- Need for a Common Platform
- Competing with Partners: Application Developers
- Market Development
- Market Expansion: New Sites, New Services and New Applications
- Inter-graph Features
Market Implications
- We Design vs. You Design
- Portal Model
- Extension to P2P
- Media Distribution
- Mobile
- Facebook: The New Bowser?
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