Back in January I predicted that the blogosphere would be the next MySpace. The amount of freedom and innovation in the “wild widget web” will be ultimately more compelling.
So it’s interesting to see Facebook release a powerful development platform for external developers. This is a very smart move for them, and a smart way to leverage their position as gatekeeper to their millions of users.
As Josh points out, this is tantamount to an extra $250 million R&D budget for Facebook. But Scott Heiferman warns of parallels to Prodigy and AOL.
This is a smarter move than what AOL and Prodigy did 10 years ago.
Wow, seems that the facebook api offers a lot of possibilities! did you give it a try already?
I think that Frogans technology is something that might achieve in its own way the “widgetization” of the social web that you’re foreseeing. I talk more about it here: http://www.froganeyes.org/?p=26 An important advantage here is that a frogans is much more like a mini-site than an application. Actually, frogans are not applications at all, and that should take a considerable burden off the shoulders of those who wish to author them.