As you might already know, I’ve been working for a company called Uzanto on a Web 2.0 start-up called SlideShare. SlideShare got some coverage late last year when TechCrunch profiled it. Long story short: I met Jonathan Boutelle, one of the three founders of Uzanto, at BarCampPune2. A few months later, after I got profiled by the Wall Street Journal and the London Times, he offered me an internship. I accepted, and so here I am in Delhi working with the SlideShare team as a “content person”.
The Facebook Platform
A few days ago, Facebook launched the Facebook Platform, a set of APIs and tools that let developers build “apps” or modules for Facebook, which users can choose to install on their profiles. These apps are basically widgets, like those that users put on their blogs and MySpace profiles by copy-pasting some HTML code. The only difference is that, here, developers design and create these specifically for Facebook with the tools provided. Users needn’t rack their brains trying to figure out how to essentially hack their profiles to make things appear correctly.
No hacking required
I’ve spent hours in the past helping people attempt to “pimp” their MySpace profiles without making any of their YouTube videos disappear. So, I see this as a huge step forward for social networking in general. It’s still not as open as MySpace, if you can call pasting HTML and CSS code-snippets in modules intended for personality information ‘open’. But MySpace has also been banning third-party embeds and widgets on the grounds that they violate the site’s terms of service, when in reality, all they do is threaten MySpace’s revenue stream by competing with its offerings. Facebook has gone in exactly the opposite direction by not only letting developers create pages and apps for the site and allowing them to monetise their efforts, but also by allowing users to disable (delete) the default Facebook applications like Photos, Groups, etc.
If you think about it, Facebook has almost completely opened itself up to its competitors. So, for example, instead of using Facebook’s social bookmarking (post to profile) functionality, I can just use the service I like best, Digg, and have it integrated into my Facebook profile. And that’s exactly what I’m doing.
Who needs the default Facebook apps?
Now let’s look at Facebook’s other default applications: Photos, Groups, Events, Posted Items, Notes and Marketplace. I don’t use any of them. I uploaded some photos to Facebook a while back, but the service I use on a daily basis is Flickr. Most of the groups/forums I’m a member of are hosted on Google Groups. To share links and post items I find, I use Digg. And I have a little Notes-blog here on my own site. I don’t need Facebook’s apps and Zuckerberg knows it. That’s why he’s gone and opened up Facebook.
A Flickr app
Currently, I only have two apps installed: the unofficial Last.fm one and the Digg one. I would absolutely love to be able to install a Flickr app and have all my photos show up on Facebook profile. I would deactivate Facebook’s Photos app in a heartbeat. Since Yahoo! doesn’t seem to be interested in integrating Flickr with Facebook, I suggest we do the same thing that Jake Jarvis, the guy who built the unofficial Last.fm app, did and build a Flickr app ourselves. I’m no developer, so I don’t think I’ll be able to do any coding myself, but I could offer moral support. 
Jokes aside, I may have some info to share, as I’m currently working on figuring out how the whole Facebook Platform works, because we’re planning to create a SlideShare app for Facebook.
Update: There are already (at least) two Flickr Facebook apps available: Flickr and My Flickr. My Flickr is far more polished than Flickr, which, unsurprisingly, was created by a 14 year-old.
Update (17/8/07): I’m now using the Flickr Photos app, which is the best of the lot.
