I’ve been spending a lot of time playing with Facebook’s new “platform” feature. Basically, it allows developers to build neat little widgets that extend the social network in a number of ways. Users can now play games with their friends, share their favorite drink recipes, post songs to their profiles. And cool new applications keep showing up every day.
It’s not as though they’re the first social network to open the kimono to third party value-adds. When Friendster allowed seven developers to work on the network late last year, they experienced a 17.76% jump in unique visitors. It’s clear that users like the creativity that third-party developers bring to the table.
So what makes Facebook’s third-party offering compelling and relevant to businesses? The fact that advertising is no longer the only way to reach Facebook’s more than 16 million users. Companies and organizations can build applications that users find useful. This is a great new way to introduce folks to a new brand or reinforce loyalty to one that’s been around for a while.
For example, US Senator Barack Obama’s presidential campaign was the first political candidacy to create an application for Facebook. The app serves all the most recent Obama video and news onto users’ profiles and enables them to identify and share Obama materials with friends who live in early primary states.
While I think it’s cool that Obama’s campaign has launched an application on Facebook, I think they could do a better job of adding value for users. Folks who already support Obama will be more than happy to use this application, but what about those who are still making up their minds? It would be really cool to see an application that lets users answer political questions to determine how closely their values and priorities align with those of Senator Obama. They key to creating an application that wins hearts and minds is how useful and interesting it is, not how well it serves the organization’s one-sided interests.
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Drew Meyers 05.29.07 at 7:12 pm
I like your idea about building an application that asks political questions and gives the end user an idea about what candidates are like them (tho it is always hard to get straight answers from politicians to make it work)
Teresa Valdez Klein 05.30.07 at 9:38 am
Drew: That’s why these kinds of applications should be built by the campaigns themselves. Proud supporters will display that they agree with their candidate on 87% of the issues that matter to them strongly. Those who are looking for a candidate to support will be able to shop around and quickly see where their values stack up.
Candidates probably wouldn’t want to give a straight answer to a centralized database, but building surveys like this gives them more control over the process, which — as Web 1.0 as it sounds — would probably make them feel more comfortable with the whole thing.