BUSINESS BLOGS
BUSINESS BLOGS
category: business
17 Jul 2008

Hmm.  Here’s what I wrote last year when Facebook launched its API: don’t do it.

I even lambasted VCs who were rushing like fools to fund these apps.  I could link to one of the pieces… but you can imagine the gist: “Are you crazy, fool?”

Here’s what has happened in one short year: companies like Slide and Rock You raised tens of millions of dollars.  Bow now, the seemingly-inevitable-to-anyone-with-a-brain is happening:

Facebook naturally emulated one of the more popular apps.  From Valleywag:

If you’re the application developer and they’re the platform owner, you have to know death can come at any moment: Create a popular, simple application, and the platform owner might just rip you off in their next release. It’s happened to Max Levchin’s Slide, maker of the popular Facebook widget Top Friends. With its latest profile redesign, Facebook now allows users to specify which friends they’d like to display to profile visitors.

The result of this, when you “rinse and repeat”, is that funding for these apps will dry up, naturally - and it is, according to Valleywag and SAI.

My only question, frankly, is: is this a surprise to anyone with a two-digit IQ?