Facebook

I signed up to FaceBook a few weeks ago to see what all the fuss was about, and I’m still not sure I really understand.

OK, so it’s yet another social networking site, and it’s probably better than most of the rest. You can use it to store your photos (like Flickr) or videos (like YouTube), or to post regular status updates (like Twitter) And it’s got lots of ‘fun’ little applications, if you’re into that kind of thing. It’s got an API too, so it seems to have gained something of a reputation for being an open platform.

But how open is it?

I can show my Flickr photos on FaceBook, but as far as I can tell if I posted my photos directly onto FaceBook I couldn’t share them with the world at large. I can show my Twitter status on FaceBook, but I can’t just make it use that for my FaceBook status (or at least not without a lot of work). I could use the site like a blog, but then only a tiny invited audience would get to see my ramblings (big loss, I know). The whole site needs login, so it’s not externally searchable.

All the FaceBook applications seem to either exist solely within the site itself, or to just be a window onto somewhere else. There’s no real interaction going on. There are no APIs to allow other applications to access FaceBook data – it’s all one-way traffic. There aren’t even any RSS feeds.

It seems like FaceBook are making a play to become the Microsoft Windows of the social networking world – the common interface to everyone’s applications. Maybe it’s because I’m a long-time Mac user, but that makes me really nervous.