This post is the last in a 5-part series that has identified our picks for the top 50 Facebook apps (10 each in 5 categories). Be sure to check out Part 1: Work, Part 2: Play, Part 3: Media, and Part 4: Utility as well.

Extended Info is the perfect app to start off this list -- it even uses the word extended in the title! This app, which won the F8 Hackathon contest, allows you to tell the world more about yourself by adding custom profile fields such as activities, interests, favorite coffee shops, or whatever you can think of. With Extended Info your profile also supports videos, images, MP3 files, and colored text.

SuperPoke!

Who wants to poke someone when you can pinch them instead? SuperPoke! extends the built in poking application on Facebook by allowing you choose from an extensive list of additional actions. What sets SuperPoke! apart from other poking apps, is that you can choose to dole out new pokes, rather than just adding new forms of poking to your own profile. It would be great, though, if like the popular X Me app, you could define your own original poke styles.

Advanced Wall

The Advanced Wall app takes the Facebook wall to new levels by adding support for styled text, images, videos, and flash. This is all made possible through a nice wysiwyg editor. Some people might argue that this type of app causes the "MySpacification" of Facebook and should be shunned. But millions of people disagree, having already installed this app and others like it.

Top Friends

Top Friends is by far the most popular third-party application on Facebook, and with good reason: it's actually pretty useful. I have about 150 friends on Facebook, but I only regularly interact with a handful of those. Top Friends lets you create a box on your profile of your 32 favorite contacts for quick access. Rather than having to slog through your entire list of friends to find the buddy whose profile you're after, you can just click once after making him or her a Top Friend.

Live Blog

Live Blog replaces Facebook's notes app with a full blog that is displayed on your profile. It has support for YouTube vidoes and HTML, and includes commenting. Coming soon: RSS/Atom feeds, draft and preview functions, and built-in image upload.

Friend Stats

Friend Stats brings Facebook's network stats closer to home by showing you what your friends are into. It's a pretty interesting way to learn about your group of friends or coworkers and gives you a ton of statistics culled from their profiles including age, sex, political leaning, who writes the most notes, has the most wall posts, has held the most jobs, and a lot of other interesting facts. For example, among my friends, the most popular movie is "Boondock Saints" and the most popular TV show is "Family Guy."

Widgets

Like Advanced Wall, many people feel the Widgets app from Widgetbox contributes to the "MySpacification" of Facebook. And they may have a point. Widgets allows users to add any of the more than 10,000 Widgetbox widgets to their Facebook profile -- just like MySpace -- but thankfully, it doesn't let users get around the no autoplay rule Facebook imposes on Flash widgets. Many of the widgets available in this app let you add functionality from outside apps that have yet to make the jump to Facebook, and so this application will have a use for many people.

Graffiti

Graffiti is the most popular of the Facebook drawing apps. It's not the most advanced, but I think it is the easiest to get the hang of. And you can actually make some pretty impressive art with it if you A) have some modicum of talent and B) have the patience to do it (see below for an example). Graffiti places a simple drawing app on your profile that lets your friends leave you drawn obscenities (or works of art -- whatever they fancy).

van Gogh's "Starry Night" reproduced in Facebook.

Moodsic

There are a number of Facebook apps for displaying your mood (an extension of the built-in status app) and when I started I honestly didn't think I would pick this one. But Moodsic is one of the more novel of the mood apps. With Moodsic, you set you mood and the app matches how you feel with songs from popular artists. Moodsic got serious points for matching my mood of "somewhat sleepy" with "The Weight" by The Band -- a classic. Moodsic is also a monetized app -- you and your friends can purchase the music you're listening to. Some annoying bits: You can only play tracks once, and if you skip too many it disables skipping (similar to Pandora, in that respect).

I pulled into Nazareth, I was feelin' about half past dead;
I just need some place where I can lay my head.
"Hey, mister, can you tell me where a man might find a bed?"
He just grinned and shook my hand, and "No!", was all he said.
--The Band

iGift

This was a tough one to choose. Both of the two top gifting applications on Facebook, which let you send Facebook-style gift icons for free, have the same number of gifts and more or less identical interfaces and features. In the end iGift won out for two reason: it has marginally better artwork than its chief rival, and it is categorized, making it easier to find the perfect gift for any occasion (or at least any occasion where sending a thumbnail image of a hot dog is appropriate).

Conclusion

Those are the top 10 Facebook applications that for extension. Which apps did we skip that you think should be in the top 10? Which apps shouldn't be on our list? Please let us know in the comments. Let the debate begin!

This post is the fourth in a 5-part series that will identify the top 50 Facebook apps (10 each in 5 categories). Be sure to check out Part 1: Work, Part 2: Play, and Part 3: Media, as well.

Scrawl Pad adds an editable text box to your profile that any of your friends can edit. While that makes it marginally less useful (since your friends can change anything it says, it's probably not suitable for important notes), it is still useful for sharing quick information with friends or coworkers about meetings or memos, etc. It blends very well into your profile and almost feels as if it should have been there all along.

Mobile

The official Mobile app from Facebook adds Facebook functionality to your mobile phone. View and upload photos directly from your camera phone, or send and receive messages, notes, pokes, and Wall posts using text messages. The mobile application also includes a phone book that lets you look up your friend's contact info.

HTML Box

HTML Box is an app that lets you add pretty much anything to your Facebook profile. You still can't get around the no autoplay rule that Facebook has imposed on developers, but with HTML Box you could add almost any photo, video, text, or flash animation/application you can think of. In a way, HTML Box lets anyone have their own custom Facebook app running on their profile (i.e., this is perfect for advertising your website or business via your profile!).

ChipIn

ChipIn is how you raise money on Facebook. Using the ChipIn application you can solicit funds from your friends for an event or collection and keep track of everyone's donation. No one actually gets charged until you reach your goal. [Austin from ChipIn tells me that this is no longer the case, and funds are now added immediately after "chipping in." -- Ed.] Trying to raise $100 for Bob's birthday party at the office? Install ChipIn, set $100 as your fundraising goal, and ask 20 co-workers to each chip in five bucks. The widget does the rest for you, collecting funds using PayPal and even keeping track of how far you are from your goal with a visual status indicator.

NewsCloud

NewsCloud is a social news application for Facebook. The NewsCloud app lets you submit, read, comment, and vote on stories from within your Facebook account. It also supports videos from the Daily Show and the Colbert Report. NewsCloud users can form and join "clouds" (groups) that focus on a specific topic of news, and can access Facebook's built in share utility to easily share stories with their friends.

my RSS

my RSS is a simple RSS reader for Facebook. However, it's not really the greatest way to consume RSS feeds, because if you subscribe to multiple full text feeds it just displays them all one after the other on a single page. I also couldn't quite get the feeds I subscribed to to display properly on my profile. Hopefully the developers of my RSS will continue to work on it and improve on the UI because a full fledged RSS reader inside Facebook is a very useful application. Even not quite fully cooked, this was the best RSS reader I could find on Facebook.

Files

Files, an application by online file storage company Box.net, allows Facebook users to share files from their profile. Each user gets 1GB of free space and their files are displayed in a box on their profile for anyone to download. The application is a snap to use, but I really wish there was a way to restrict files to certain friends or at least certain groups of people.

Carpool

There's really no denying that Carpool is a useful app, and one that will only get more useful as people join. Carpool does just what it sounds like it does: it helps people arrange rides together. If you need a ride home from school or what to arrange a carpool to and from work, this app can help you find like minded people in your area. The developers are also working on making carpooling safer by helping you find rides with friends, or friends of friends who at least aren't total strangers.

Price Tracker

Price Tracker is a useful little app for Amazon addicts like myself. The application keeps track of the price history for items on Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, and Amazon.co.uk and notifies you when the price changes on an item you are tracking. The idea is that because the price of many items on Amazon changes rather frequently, by monitoring them with Price Tracker you can assure yourself you won't pay top dollar if you don't have to.

Cookbook

What's for dinner? Cookbook, a social recipe sharing app for Facebook, makes that a much easier question to answer. Browse, create, and share recipes, and see what your friends are cooking. Cookbook has 1588 recipes across eight categories as I write this, ensuring that you will never go hungry.

Conclusion

Those are the top 10 Facebook applications that for utility. Which apps did we skip that you think should be in the top 10? Which apps shouldn't be on our list? Please let us know in the comments. And be sure to check back in tomorrow for part 5 of our list. Let the debate begin!

Firstly the Read/WriteWeb Facebook Group already has over 400 members, after just a few days. It's open to anyone and you can join here. We're currently looking at what apps to implement to make the group compelling - if you have any suggestions, please comment here or on the group's 'wall'.

The highlight of Facebook Week has been Josh Catone's Top 10 posts. With nearly 1800 apps, the platform has been a runaway success for Facebook, and the most popular ten applications reach over 46 million users. Josh has picked his favorite 50 apps, across 5 categories. He's doing one Top 10 every day. Here are his posts so far:

Top 10 Facebook Apps: Work - can Facebook be used as an online office? You can but try, using these ten apps!

Top 10 Facebook Apps: Play - proving that he's a dedicated reviewer, Josh told me this morning on IM that he's been playing a game of facebook scrabble for 3 days now! What else can you play on Facebook? Check this post to find out :-)

Top 10 Facebook Apps: Media - today's list showcases apps that let users watch, display, look at, and remix video, audio, and photo content.

Facebook Analysis

Earlier this week I looked at how open Facebook is, really. Good comments to this post, including one from Omar Ismail who rightly asks: "is it possible to get data OUT of Facebook using REST APIs? If so, then I'd say that is quite open." Another commenter, William, answered that as follows:

"The Data and content that members own cannot be easily exported out, or used with many other existing internet applications. The flow of data and information is one way. The Open platform is in fact open for developers, but closed to the rest of the internet."

There's a lot of great Facebook analysis going on elsewhere too. Robert Scoble has a post entitled Why Microsoft doesn’t deserve Facebook. Dave McClure is possibly the most obsessed Facebook geek currently! He has loads of FB posts on his blog. Not forgetting the excellent Inside facebook, a blog devoted full-time to this topic.

Poll: How many Facebook friends do you have?

Don't forget to vote in our current poll:

This post is the third in a 5-part series that will identify the top 50 Facebook apps (10 each in 5 categories). Be sure to check out Part 1: Work and Part 2: Play, as well.

Video is an official app from Facebook that allows users to upload videos, post videos directly from mobile phones, or record them from web cams. These videos are pretty high quality, can be posted to your profile or friends' Walls, or sent via the insite messaging system. One of the more interesting features is per-video permission that let you decide on a video-to-video basis who sees each clip.

iLike

iLike is the third most popular application on Facebook (a fact that Mike Arrington wrote about yesterday). It's easy to see why the iLike app is well-liked by Facebook users. It lets you add music and music videos directly to your profile, as well as find concerts and concert attendees in your area. Though audio from some of the major label artists songs appears only as 30 second clips, iLike offers hundreds of thousands of full songs and it's all legal.

Art

There are two apps on Facebook called 'Art,' but this one by Matt Kraft and Phil Edwards is already bringing a little more class to the profiles of about 30,000 users. Choosing from over 160,000 classic works of art, users can use this fun little app to create their own custom galleries in their profiles to show off their tastes and share some culture with their friends. Users can annotate their galleries with their own notes and demonstrate their art history knowledge.

Audio

We already looked at the Facebook Video app, so here comes the Audio application. This one wasn't created by Facebook, but instead by a member of the faculty at Stanford University. However, because of its simplicity, more than 700,000 users utilize Audio to find, share, and play MP3 music files.

Shoebox

Shoebox is something like a social bookmarking app for Facebook, but its key feature is its support for media like photos and videos. Shoebox, which is the Facebook version of Plum, lets users clip webpages, save photos and videos, and share them with friends and other Facebook users. Users can sort saved items by tags.

Splashcast

The Splashcast app on Facebook allows users to remix photos, videos, audio and documents or use feeds from YouTube, Flickr or any RSS source to create multimedia slideshows. You can use these slideshows to create a multimedia channel that displays your favorite media with your own comments and annotations. Creation is done via Splashcast's easy-to-use flash editor completey from within Facebook.

Last.fm

Last.fm was kind of slow to jump on the Facebook platform bandwagon, so there are a bunch of Last.fm apps created by fans, but only one of them is the official application. Last.fm's app lets Facebook users share their favorite music in the form of a playlist of full length tracks. With "Buy Album" apps integrated directly on each playlist item, Last.fm is one of the few apps on Facebook that is currently subtly monetizing.

Fliptrack

Fliptrack is a cool little Facebook app that members can use to create music videos out of their friends' uploaded photos and videos. Add music (from a library), text, and effects and then share the completed videos on your profile.

Timeline

Timeline is a twist on the standard photo slideshow that lets you display photos in a playable timeline. Timeline automatically fills out information from your life (your date of birth, where and when you went to school, work history, etc.) that it learns from your profile. Adding events is easy. One thing that is lacking is that it appears you can only use photos from your own albums, but it would be great to be able to use photos from friends' albums as well.

GridView

GridView is a very simple app that displays the profile pictures of your friends in a mosaic embeds it on your own profile. GridView isn't the most practical app, but it is a pretty neat way to visualize your friends and turn their photos into a piece of profile art.

Conclusion

Those are the top 10 Facebook applications that for media. Which apps did we skip that you think should be in the top 10? Which apps shouldn't be on our list? Please let us know in the comments. And be sure to check back in tomorrow for part 4 of our list. Let the debate begin!

This post is the second part of a 5-part series that will identify the top 50 Facebook apps (10 each in 5 categories). If you missed Part 1, which deals with applications that have to do with work, check it out.

I had one main requirement for a flash gaming app: Desktop Tower Defense. Of the various game apps -- and there are many -- Games from RockYou! meets that requirement, and also integrates with Facebook better than most flash game apps. Flash games + Facebook = very little work getting done.

Matches

Matches is about secret admirers. If you have a crush on someone, list them as a match, and they won't find out unless they also express interest in you. Of course, there is a slight flaw in this app. The app tells users when someone has expressed interest in them, and because Facebook lists which of your friends use each app, unless most of yours have Matches installed it should be pretty easy to figure out who has that crush.

Bookshelf

There are enough Facebook apps for rating and reviewing your book collection that they could fill out their own top 10 list. Bookshelf is neither the oldest nor the largest, but in my opinion its the best, even though it is a bit rough around the edges (I got some error messages, and some people have had some trouble importing from outside services, like LibraryThing). Bookshelf supports books, DVDs, games, and music, and lets you browse not only your friends collections, but also those within your network. Bookshelf also makes pretty accurate suggestions based on your Facebook profile before you've even added an item. The developers were smart to include an invite form as part of the install process, which should help spread the app faster.

BandTracker

BandTracker, an app from classifieds site Oodle, lets users track over 200,000 different bands and find out when they're coming to play in their area. The app also lets you see who your friends are tracking so you can find new music, or hook up with buddies to go to shows with.

Food Fight!

Food Fight! is one of the more silly apps on Facebook, but so far has already attracted nearly 1.8 million users. The premise is simple, each day you earn money with which you can purchase food to toss at your friends. The creators of the app have cleverly sprinkled ads for their other Facebook properties all around the Food Fight! applications, which has led to them owning a handful of the more popular apps on the platform.

Quizzes

Quizzes is an app that lets you create a quiz about yourself to find out how well your friends really know you. Which of your friends knows your nickname or your favorite pizza topping? Back when I was in high school, there was an app like this for AOL Instant Messenger profiles that spread like wildfire, and Quizzes seems to be doing just that with over 1.7 million users in just a couple of months.

Pets

There are multiple virtual pet apps on Facebook, but the simply named Pets is the only one I could find that adds elements of a role playing game. Pets lets you build up your pet's strength, buy gear for it, and then battle with other pets. Your friends can even help you out by petting or feeding your virtual pal. You can think of it as something like Pokemon for Facebook. Unfortunately a couple of features are disabled at the moment.

Honesty Box

Of all the requests I get to install applications, I get requests for Honesty Box the most -- I wonder what that means people want to say to me. Honesty Box is an app that lets your friends leave anonymous messages for you, both positive and negative. If your friends are too polite to let you know your new haircut makes you look like Herman Munster, then perhaps installing Honesty Box would be a good idea. Unfortunately, because Facebook tells you which of your friends have each app installed, this app suffers from the same flaw as Matches.

Stories

Being a writer, I had to include a collaborative writing application. Stories lets you write stories with your friends tiny bits at a time. There are a few annoying things about this application (like if you don't fill out all the required fields it erases the ones you have filled out -- including whatever you're trying to add to the story), but in all it is pretty fun, and ideal for silly stream of consciousness collaborations created with friends.

Scrabulous

If you're like me, you love Scrabble but aren't too keen on the board set up and random letter tile distribution of Yahoo!'s Literati game. Enter Scrabulous, the companion Facebook app of a web site by the same name. Though likely infringing on any number of Hasbro trademarks, Scrabulous is a faithful reproduction of Scrabble game play that would make any logophile happy. It's not real-time, but that's actually not so necessary as Scrabble can be played one turn at a time.

Conclusion

Those are the top 10 Facebook applications that for play. Which apps did we skip that you think should be in the top 10? Which apps shouldn't be on our list? Please let us know in the comments. And be sure to check back in tomorrow for part 3 of our list. Let the debate begin!

But how open is Facebook, really? Turns out, not that much.

Position 1: Facebook is Bad

Let's first look at the argument that Facebook is not only not open, but is ultimately bad for the Web. Jason Kottke perhaps represented this position best, with a post at the end of June entitled: Facebook is the new AOL. The post's title clearly implies that Facebook circa 2007 is as much a walled garden (i.e. closed platform) as AOL was back in 1994. Kottke's argument is that instead of web apps plugging into Facebook, it should be the other way round: i.e. web apps should "run on the internet, out in the open, and people can tie their social network into it if they want." In a follow-up post, Kottke clarified that "the platform is great for Facebook, but it's a step sideways or even backwards (towards an AOL-style service) for the web."

Kottke made some great points: that most Facebook data is private (you need to be a member to access it) and that it's not indexed by Google or other search engines. Indeed, in both respects, Facebook is more closed than MySpace!

Walled Garden Pic: Alex Eckford

Position 2: Facebook is Good

Marc Andreessen has a thorough post extolling the virtues of Facebook. Note that he doesn't say that the platform is open; nevertheless his position is that Facebook is overall good for Web developers and startups. He says "the Facebook API enables outside web developers to inject new features and content into the Facebook environment." He goes on to argue that Facebook's development platform is more sophisticated than MySpace's 'embedding', because Facebook provides "a full suite of APIs" to developers, it provides easy distribution and allows third parties to earn money off their Facebook apps. Andreessen makes some very valid points - in summary, that the Facebook platform is great for developers and also for users.

Why Facebook Isn't Open

Facebook ultimately is a closed, proprietary system. Primarily this is because Facebook doesn't use existing Web standards for mark-up or database language. Instead of using HTML and SQL, Facebook uses two "variants" - called FQL and FBML. The official reason for the variants is that they offer more functionality and integration within the Facebook environment - which is no doubt true, however it also of course means your apps can only run in Facebook. As Andreessen noted, the upshot is that "Facebook's own code and functionality remains closed and proprietary."

What is FBML? Dare Obasanjo described it well: "The markup language [FBML] is a collection of "safe" HTML tags like blockquote and table, and custom Facebook-only tags like fb:create-button, fb:friend-selector and fb:if-is-friends-with-viewer."

Facebook is not an open platform, let's get that straight. However it is a very usable, flexible and highly functional platform. These are positive things, but I'm inclined to agree with Kottke's position that ultimately, it's not a step forward for the Web.

Overall I liked Andreessen's term for all this: "living in Facebook's world". That is precisely what the Facebook platform is - a developer-friendly platform that mimics the Web (e.g. using FBML instead of HTML). It's attractive to developers, because so many people are using Facebook and its growth shows no signs of slowing. And developers and startups can make serious coin from the Facebook platform.

Conclusion

Facebook is an excellent web development platform - there is significant activity and innovation happening on it (which is why we're devoting a whole week to Facebook on R/WW). But in the end, the data isn't out in the open and developers must adhere to Facebook standards (FMBL, FQL) as well as some Web standards (REST APIs). So Facebook is not open, really.

I guess the real question is: does it matter? Well the Web's history gives us the answer to that. Yes it does matter, because when any company controls a closed, proprietary Internet platform - history shows that it ends in hubris (e.g. AOL, Microsoft). Facebook doesn't control social networking yet, far from it. But it's feasible that they will in future, if/when MySpace is vanquished.

What do you think - Facebook platform, good or bad?

But tonight I noticed that the 2nd step has been Ajaxified - meaning you no longer need to land on a Request Confirmation/Skip This Step page. Instead it is an Ajax pop-up. Now, math has never been my strong point -- but doesn't this mean that the normal 3-page process has been whittled down to 1 page? Won't that play havoc with Facebook's precious page views? Weeell, maybe Facebook has realised that the Tyranny of the Page View is over.

Look Ma, no page view!

There are a lot of duplicates on the Facebook platform (i.e., there are at least 10 apps for cataloging books!), and some duplicates even share the same name. In that case, as with the rest of this list, I just chose the one that stood out to me as the best. Today's list deals with apps for work.

You need to know what's going down on Wall Street and the Simple Stock Quotes app is the nicest way to get that done. It is super easy to set up, blends exceptionally well with the Facebook look and feel, and can fit nicely in either profile column. Simple Stock Quotes also adds a bit of a social aspect by letting you check out the stocks your friends are tracking, as well as the community at large (the most watched stock so far? AAPL, followed closely by GOOG).

To-Do

To-Do is my favorite GTD app on Facebook. Add tasks, categorize, prioritize and add a due date. Due dates with To-Do are smart, so type "tomorrow" or "friday" and the app will know which day your task is due. Tasks can easily be edited or deleted (which is how you mark them as complete).

Email

Not all of your business contacts are on Facebook, so when you need to contact someone on the outside, intrasite messaging just won't work. Enter Email, an app that lets you send email to anyone directly from within Facebook. Emails appear to be sent from your real email address, and if the recipient uses the provided web form link to reply, the replies are kept threaded in the app, which looks and feels basically like the default Facebook messaging app.

Calendar

The Calendar app from 30Boxes is the nicest calendar on Facebook, in my opinion. It is a complete personal calendar solution that includes SMS reminders and a built-in to-do list function. You can also share upcoming events to you Facebook profile.

Zoho - Online Office

The Zoho app loads your Zoho documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and databases into Facebook. It can map to a current Zoho account and migrate your docs over, or you can create a new user. There are still a few bugs, and it isn't as fully integrated into Facebook as it probably could be, but even so, a full office suite that you don't need to leave Facebook to use is great.

Docs

Docs is a document sharing application from Scribd that already has over 50,000 uploaded documents. They tout it as a way to share "problems sets, poetry, lecture notes, and random funny stuff." However, despite their warnings, I can't help but think that some unscrupulous college students see Docs as a good way to plagiarize papers.

BillMonk

BillMonk is a great app that lets you track who owes you money and how much money you owe others. BillMonk is an infinitely useful application for anyone who has to deal with roommates and it follows the Facebook design conventions nicely.

WalkieTalkie

WalkieTalkie adds free group chat to Facebook groups. Sometimes you just need to say it out loud, so WalkieTalkie can be a valuable tool for businesses that want to use Facebook as groupware.

Application Developer Services

Since you're reading Read/WriteWeb, there is a good chance that you're an app developer yourself. If you're looking to break into the Facebook app market, but don't really know where to start, then install the Application Developer Services app. It's sort of a marketplace for Facebook developers. App developers get a profile where they can show off their portfolio of Facebook apps, and businesses can search for the perfect developer for their application.

Lending Club

Well, now you have your programmer, but you need the cash to make your app a reality. Lending Club is a peer lending application that lets users take out loans funded by other users. Lending club opened on Facebook on May 24th, and has already lent out over $250,000 to Facebook users.

Conclusion

Those are the top 10 Facebook applications that can help you get some work done. Which apps did we skip that you think should be in the top 10? Which apps shouldn't be on our list? Please let us know in the comments. And be sure to check back in tomorrow for part 2 of our list. Let the debate begin!

To celebrate Facebook Week, we've set up a Facebook Group for Read/WriteWeb readers. It's open to anyone... even Australians :-) We're running a poll too, at the end of this post, asking how many 'friends' you have on Facebook currently. We'll run other Facebook-related polls over the course of the week.

Facebook has come into its own over the past year, by first expanding its user base in September 2006 (beyond US college students) and then opening up its platform in May 2007. Neither of these were surprising moves, but both were necessary in order for Facebook to challenge its rival MySpace.

The Fox Interactive-owned MySpace has been the number 1 social network for the past couple of years, but it had (still has) two glaring weaknesses. One is that MySpace is a closed platform, meaning that third party developers either cannot integrate their products into MySpace or - even if they can - there are many restrictions. The second major 'weakness' of MySpace is that it is heavily skewed to a teen audience; and so is not particularly appealing to older people. There are other issues too - e.g. the design of MySpace is appalling - but the two main weaknesses above are the ones that Facebook needed to target, and did so very successfully.

Facebook's attack on Myspace started in September 2006, when they opened up their user base beyond US college students. That allowed people like me - a mid-30's kiwi - to join. But still, at that point there was little in Facebook to appeal to me, or other non-college users. However that changed in May 2007, when Facebook launched an open platform. Soon after, there were hundreds of third party apps in Facebook - and suddenly I had loads of 'friends' on the platform.

The Platform

In Read/WriteWeb's 2007 Web Predictions, published in December 2006, we predicted that "social networks will probably [...] become more open - and data portability will start to occur." Facebook essentially made that a reality in May 2007, with the launch of "The Platform" - a system enabling 3rd party companies to integrate their services inside of Facebook user pages. Almost overnight, this made Facebook much more of a threat not only to MySpace - but interestingly to Yahoo too. Suddenly, Facebook was a major player on the Web scene. Why? Because no other Internet bigco had opened its platform to such an extent - possibly with the exception of Amazon. But Amazon's open platform is more about portability of data, whereas Facebook's is an open invitation for third party apps to integrate into a hugely popular social network platform. In the long run, Facebook's May 2007 platform launch may have signaled the next Big IPO (after Google's).

The Future

Facebook has its competitors - e.g. the start pages and other social networks like LinkedIn. But there's no question Facebook has set its sights on being a big, influential Internet company. Already many startups have integrated their products into the Facebook platform, so over the rest of 2007 it'll be interesting to see how the platform continues to grow and how many more mainstream users Facebook attracts.

Coming up this week: we'll profile many of the Facebook apps coming out and analyze further the Facebook platform. Stay tuned!

Poll: How many Facebook friends do you have?