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Leave it to our fantastic ebizQ team, who are constantly coming up with new and exciting ways to tell us how to do our jobs better (and I mean that in good, thankful way)! Our own Lisa Damast reports that our absolute favorite social networking tool, Facebook, is headed for an IPO. Really exciting stuff, because you know what, this is the most exciting IPO I've seen talked about in years. It's not just because Facebook is hotter than hot right now, it's because Facebook has a unique and somewhat beautiful approach toward application development.

Application development, like Web 2.0 and other SOA related trends that we write about here in ebizQ all the time, takes time and energy, but application development also requires buy-in from the users. For technology to be disruptively successful, it has to be either forced on people, its benefit must be extremely obvious, or it must be easy to use.

What Facebook does is make applications available to its users, and then the users can decide to install the application. I don't know how applications are introduced initially but I do know if a user in my network installs an application. I find out about it in my regular Facebook news feed, which is where I also find out what my friends are doing. Like if they're planning a blood drive in my neighborhood, or just got engaged, or whatever.

Why this is genius:

1. I have already "bought in" to my friends on Facebook. They are my friends, so there is some kind of non-Web-related buy-in that is assumed.

2. Because I am a social networker, I am interested in what my friends are doing, both on and offline.

3. Therefore, if my friends download an application and I see it and download it and start using it, then all of my friends see that I have downloaded something new and may download it for themselves to use. Then all their friends see it, then their friends' friends see it, etc.

Facebook is so 2.0 it's almost 3.0.

Posted by elizabeth in Enterprise and Web 2.0 |Digg This|Add to del.icio.us

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