In 2007, Zuckerberg announced that Facebook would become a 'platform,' meaning that outside developers could start creating applications that would run inside the site. It worked.
Facebook allows outsiders to add functionality to the site but reserves the right to change that policy at any time, to charge a fee for applications, or to de-emphasize or eliminate apps that court controversy or that they simply don't like.
The original dream of Facebook Platform was to enable developers to build experiences that were social at their core, like Facebook Photos, without having to build their own standalone social network.
Does Facebook behave like a tool in my hand, or a firehose designed to spew at me in accordance with other peoples' agendas? Concretely: can I write my own client to present a filtered view of the Facebook stream, or have other people do that for me?
Now I am not against widgets, those small third-party applications that people can put on their Web pages on social networks like Facebook and MySpace, in general.
Android is one of the most open systems I've ever seen. What makes Android great is it's literally designed from the ground up to be customised in a very powerful way.
Android was intended to be very customizable. And we welcome innovations.
I've been using the Mac solely for years, and got very comfortable with it.
Social gaming is not something Zuckerberg could have imagined back when he was creating Facebook in his Harvard dorm room in 2004. The change began in May 2007, when Facebook announced it would let outside developers create applications that run on top of Facebook.
Even Apple, notorious for keeping a tight grip on its products, allows fierce competitors like Google, Amazon, Spotify, and Microsoft to offer their apps on its phones and tablets.
Because Microsoft seems to sometimes not trust customer choice, they salt XP with all these little gizmos and trap doors to get people to try Microsoft stuff. But the reality is that we're downloading more players than we ever have on a worldwide basis.
We're excited by the success of WhatsApp on top of Android. Amazon brings services like Kindle on top of Android. It's a competitive world and a lot more complex than people realize. When you run a platform on scale, you have to make sure it's truly open. That way, not only do you do well, so do others.
