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Facebook Apps Facing Delays and Uncertainties
NewsCloud writes "After reading about the Facebook platform launch, I spent the next week learning the API and building my application. Facebook's platform has been pretty successful despite complaints of poor documentation, instability and outcries over its application approval process. I've been waiting two weeks for my application to be approved for their directory and had my account disabled (temporarily) after I invited a large number of colleagues. While I'm impressed with the potential of the platform, the experience has made me more concerned about the lack of transparency in privately held social networks and the risks we take as developers when we invest time in a company's platform. Facebook's home page advertises itself as "a social utility that connects you with the people around you." My concern with Facebook is that there's no one regulating the utility."
To avoid situations like this, I wonder if anyone would be interested in proposing an RFC for a public, distributed social networking system. Much like IRC, that could be made redundant with multiple geographically diverse servers and more importantly couldn't be controlled by any one corporate entity.
Advertising revenue could be made by the "application" writers themselves, and the framework (something like Facebook) would become a commodity just like IRC became.
Facebook-like social networking without the corporate oversight could be a little more chaotic, but no more chaotic than every other distributed system on the Internet.
It's because of developers like this that are making Facebook junk. It was one of the best networking applications on the net, now your getting all these frills that are really making it lame.