Social Networks And Me

Social networks are the big thing these days. Recently I joined two social networks: LinkedIn and Facebook. LinkedIn, a business-oriented social network, was fun to play with at first. I, too, joined the “add your friends” race and added as many as I could find (I didn’t just add anyone, though. Only people I actually know well enough to consider contacts). After a while, I became bored with LinkedIn. There was just nothing there for me to do. I’m not seeking a new job, I’m not looking to “network” with high-profile names. I just have nothing to do there.

Facebook, on the other hand, gives users as much stuff to tinker with as they can handle. Considered a genius move, Facebook creators opened the site by providing an application API that can be used to create “Facebook applications.” There is a huge amount of applications, from gift-giving to playlist display and whatnot. You can post images, videos, thoughts and anything you can think of on Facebook.

There’s a lot of hype around Facebook with regards to the applications. However, the applications thing can be a little annoying. Let’s say a friend posted a song that can be listened to on his profile page. To listen to that song, I have to install the application on my profile as well. Why? I have no idea. I guess either that’s an enforcement of Facebook itself, or application makers are in a race to virally spread their applications to get better numbers in the overall application installation statistics. This kind of behavior makes me not want to use the website.

Recently, Google announced OpenSocial, a way to build social networks applications in a way that is independent of a website. While the OpenSocial group includes MySpace (the biggest, yet ugliest, social network that exists today), it doesn’t include Facebook. That’s a shame for application developers, considering that Facebook is rapidly growing and appears to have a better application delivery/installation mechanism than other websites.

Assuming I have an idea for a social network application, a few questions are bothering me:

1. What kind of a business model can you have in an application that is hosted on another website? I’m guessing there is such a model or otherwise there wouldn’t be companies investing efforts in creating such applications.
2. Should I create the application in Facebook? As an OpenSocial application? Both? Maybe I should create an independent website and hook it up to the social networks later?

Update: After writing this post I went to see a video that discusses the possibilities of monetizing on the Facebook platform in addition to the problems that Facebook application developers face today and why they simply have no choice but to make users install their applications to get recognition by more users.