Facebook on the Rise

Great article covering Facebook from David Kirkpatrick of Fortune.

As the article points out,

…Facebook is taking its two major assets - its 24-million-members (growing at about 150,000 per day) and its strong technology underpinnings - and making them available to all comers.

Outsiders can now develop Internet services on Facebook’s infrastructure, he explains, that will have full access to all its members. Just as it is when someone writes a program for Windows, programmers won’t need any permission from Facebook or any special business relationship with the company.

This is likely to result in an explosion of creativity….today 65 partner companies unveiled more than 85 additional applications that members can install immediately.

Although it’s only been a week, the results have been extremely positive. Not only has it garnered the company a ton of press, but it’s also increased its value in the eyes of other companies who see this as a critical piece of their strategy.

As example, the music site ilike dropped everything to build the ilike Facebook Application. According to a recent
VentureBeat interview, ilike has added over 700,000 members through this application as of last Tuesday. Incredible

I don’t think I’m stepping out on a limb to suggest that this type of excitement will likely take the company from 24+ million users well into the 50+ million user range in short order. I’m sure that MySpace is closely monitoring these events and won’t be far behind in developing an answer to Facebook’s innovation. If it doesn’t, it seriously risks losing its grip on the #1 slot amongst Social Networking sites.

Last time I checked these are the types of growth charts that any company would love to have.

Here’s some footage of Facebook’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, unveiling the company’s new platform for developers at Facebook’s F8 Event.

Tags: Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, Social Networking, MySpace

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