innovate big

Web 2.1: how to innovate using Facebook

Yes, I hate “Web X.X” terminology just as much as you do. In this case it was too hard to resist in order to make this point clear: the announcement of the Facebook Platform and web application framework will significantly change the online community world.

Over the last few months, 4 friends from different industries (at least) have contacted me on separate occasions to brainstorm their latest web community ideas. Almost always they ask me “What Internet technologies should I use to get started?” or “How do I build my community right now?”. And without delay, I get right into what’s out there in terms of web application frameworks, prototyping, scalable infrastructure, virtualization, user-centered and interaction design techniques, etc…

But after a little more discussion, it turns out their real question is: “How do I build a thriving web community about this or that as quickly as possible?”. Not surprisingly, this happens to be the single biggest challenge for all new online communities and the simple yet disappointing answer is: it just takes time and a lot of work.

Things are changing fast however. Today it’s easier than ever to build a thriving web community or, more accurately, meta-community by building your applications atop existing communities like Facebook. This is particularly true for web communities that target Generations X and Y. Many of the third-party applications that will be coming to Facebook using this new platform could have been built in-house but opening everything up this way is such a smarter move it’s ridiculous.

Here are 5 advantages of using a platform like Facebook to build your next web application (and this is just the tip of the iceberg):

1. Tap into an existing and thriving online community with deep integration which provides you with all the essential social networking functionality.
2. Explore and prototype all your provocative web community ideas before committing any serious time or money.
3. Extend the reach of your existing web applications.
4. Ride a wave of explosive growth that is slowly gaining ground on giant incumbent MySpace.
5. Most importantly, with instant traffic you have the potential for monetizing your application immediately.