SKY'S THE LIMIT

Well, the "Social Network Platform" fatigue I talked about a few days ago, is starting to set in, this time for some of the developers. Which developers? Why, the ones who eagerly rushed in to build applications (aka apps or widgets), for the newly open for business Facebook F8 platform.

And as Marc Andreessen points out today, it's only five weeks after the launch of that much-vaunted platform, and the Facebook backlash is starting.

Here's exhibit A, as an anonymous developer in the Valleywag post describes it:

"I work for a startup in the Valley and have nothing natural against Facebook at all - in fact my team and I have spent every hour of every day for the past four weeks developing our Facebook app because we thought it was a great opportunity for exposure. Our dreams were inflated by how viral the initial set of applications were, despite their weak design.

However, over the past week we've begun to realize that the whole thing has been much more hype than reality, and has thrown the entire startup world for a loop. The numbers speak for themselves. There are a total of 1,131 apps. Of the last 500 to be approved, only 5 have over 100,000 members, and none have over 200,000."

What's happened of course is that on June 26th, Facebook throttled back the number of friends a FB user can virally invite (or spam, depending on one's point of view), from 500 a day to 10 a day (see chart from this Venturebeat post).

As Fred Wilson notes, this means that the handful few developers who won the first week viral distribution lottery, were an exception rather than the rule.

But then, platform developers historically never did promise distribution to application developers.

Application developers for Microsoft's DOS and Windows platforms, or Apple's Mac platform, always had to work hard to get retail, mail-order, or online distribution for their applications, INDEPENDENT of the platform vendor.

The Facebook platform PLUS distribution opportunity was a unique one.

But as I mentioned in the original post, it isn't going to be unique for long:

"...given the attention the strategy change has gotten in the geek and mainstream media, every incumbent social network, portal, media company, and web company that's had any aspect of social networking in it's model, is re-vamping it's strategy to both emulate and counter Facebook's strategy."

And today, Facebook's bigger competitor, MySpace, owned by News Corp, threw it's hat into the application platform ring, as highlighted in this article in the FT:

"MySpace is likely to change its technology strategy to allow other online companies to ?plug? their web services directly into its social networking site, according to Chris DeWolfe, one of its founders."

And everyone of them initially will try and create as high a walled garden around it's emerging platform as possible. This reminds me a bit of the old AOL walled garden online service of old, as I pointed out in a post a couple of weeks ago.

A post at Kottke.org puts this deja vu in this context today:

"It's called the internet and it's more compelling than AOL was in 1994 and Facebook in 2007. Eventually, someone will come along and turn Facebook inside-out, so that instead of custom applications running on a platform in a walled garden, applications run on the internet, out in the open, and people can tie their social network into it if they want, with privacy controls, access levels, and alter-egos galore."

But it's a while before we get to that Nirvana.

Before we get there, dozens of companies will fight tooth and nail to maintain some sort of walled-garden control over their "social network platform". And there are a lot of social networking companies who'll try this globally.

Look at this list by Valleywag to see how many contenders there are for this throne amongst social networks alone. You can see there are quite a few social networks popular around the world today, that'll all want to try their hand at this "platform" thing.

And it's not limited to social networks.

The platform wars on the PC, won by Microsoft a couple of decades ago, are being fought all over again on the "open" internet, and in the world of "mobile computers", which offer the promise of billions of people around the world who're rapidly getting some type of a cell phone.

Apple throws it's hat into the ring today with the iPhone, and is trying to build as many advantages into it's platform for itself as possible, as Nik Cubrilovic points out in a detailed post.

Dave Winer took a pretty good stab trying to define a "platform" as it pertains to software services, back in 1995. Here's how he described what is a critical element of any aspiring platform:

"A platform must have potential, or open space. I call this blue sky."

Given the range of entities that are going to try and build platforms in the coming months, I'd say we're in for a lot of blue skies.

So a word to advice to both developers and users of all these budding platforms, PACE YOURSELVES.

This is going to be a long marathon, not a sprint.

No sense in getting fatigued early.

And if you're an aspiring platform, "socially networked", or otherwise, get ready to rumble, "face first", as the poster suggests.