Social networking platforms as service layers
I touched on this in my Commenting 2.0 article a bit, but felt I needed to elaborate on the topic a bit.
Large successful networks today are quickly becoming platforms. Applications are a fine and great example, but the next step? in my very humble yet loud opinion, is networks built on other networks. Essentially, any network with an API (application programming interface) becomes the cloud service layer for niche networks on top to use.
How it works
In Facebook terms (though this is certainly not limited to FB), imagine creating whole community sites around groups. Love that San Pellegrino? How about a site with all those group members that google maps restaurants that serve San Pellegrino over Perrier mineral water?
Lets take it one step further. I like to travel and would like to create a tight community of travelers where people can plan and share trips together, connect, and discuss. No need to create a new profile, Facebook Connect has me covered. I?ll need a trip logging and mapping engine. Dopplr has an API that I can use. I want my users to have cool spaces to upload their photos. Flikr will do that. Vimeo can handle the video. You need to send some uncompressed TIFF image files to a member who asked for a print of that vista? Drop.io allows you to build on top of their platform as well. A simple threaded forum system, a blog upfront interviewing members about their trips? and you have a pretty rocking community powered online destination.
The point I am trying to drive is that this if Twitter is built on Rails and Facebook is really a massive mySQL database (lets keep it simple ? ), then the community sites of tomorrow (in, again, simple terms) are going to be built on Facebook and Twitter as their service layers.
Click “Read More” to see hows this benefits us users and most importantly brand managers seeking to harness this social internet thing.
