Flixster

This post is for the Facebook Application Seminar, and it will be about Orry and co's app: Flixster.

A few things before I begin. First, I'm not going to talk about Flixster itself, because I think Orry's covered the app pretty comprehensively. I do find it interesting, however, that while it's called Flixster from within the application, Facebook calls it 'Movies' on the application status bar, on the bottom left of the screen. This suggests that if Flixster is the official Facebook movie application, then it may well be possible for other businesses to position their sites as official providers of various other niche services - like Food, for instance, or Music, or Job Listings, or even a Maps app from within Facebook itself.

What I really want to talk about is Flixter's move into Facebook. Why did they do it? Flixter has already built a strong community around its services, and so why did it approach this growing network - this 'gated community', with its site and service? What exactly are the benefits that Flixter sees in Facebook, and what might that mean for the rest of the web?

I ask this because there are a conspicuous number of other web applications that are not integrated into Facebook. Google, for instance, is unlikely to integrate anything of theirs into Facebook's ecosystem, for a number of reasons that I'm not sure are merely competitive in nature. There are also a large number of indie developers who would never consider plugging their apps into Facebook - 37signals, for one, and Wufoo; and I'm fairly certain that Facebook does want developers like these to plug their services into the site. (I also get the impression that Facebook wants to be the 'operating system' of the web, in the sense that it wants to be a platform for just about anything people-related that you want to do.) So again, why Facebook, and what exactly should you take into consideration, before bringing an app into the Facebook ecosystem?

Let's look at Flixster first, because it comes from an interesting position. I particularly liked Orry's point of how, if Facebook dies, Flixster would still continue to exist. And indeed the benefits to Flixster for plugging into Facebook's ecosystem is fairly easy to guess: you get a low-barrier-to-entry in a captive audience, which means that users won't have to go through an extended sign-up process on Flixster's parent site, and you get to leverage Flixster's (existing) viral nature onto Facebook's far larger audience. The same principles that applied to the Flixster network must've been easy to implement within Facebook, and on the surface at least, both services seem to be a good fit for each other.

That being said, though, there are a couple of questions that I'd like answered, questions that matter to me as a potential app writer. It seems to me that developers today have two options: to build for Facebook, or to build for the open web (and it is ironic that it seems as if there are two 'internets'). I must note, however, that the benefits available to Flixster are benefits that are applicable to almost all other apps within the Facebook ecosystem - a low-login-barrier-to-entry; a high density of potential users, and a set of tools designed from the ground up to be potentially viral for users. So what do they give up, in exchange for all these benefits?

They give up the right to define their brand, for one. This isn't particularly dangerous, because companies making these apps still have the ability to link to external sites related to the app itself. But Facebook's brand is pervasive, and if the app's popularity outstrips that of the original site, there is a real risk that it would be defined by the first point-of-contact, which for many users would be from within Facebook itself.

If you don't believe me, consider: would you have heard of Oodle had it not been for Facebook's Marketplace? And now that you have, is not your experience tainted by the first point-of-contact from within Facebook? Let's take it a step further: let's say that Marketplace is a far lousier experience than the parent Oodle.com site. Would your impressions of the brand be affected by the first, lousier, app? It probably would now, wouldn't it?

But what else is there that might be affected? One thing I think you lose is the ability to choose the kind of community you build around your app. A peculiar truth of the Internet is that an online community is always defined by the 'tone' of the site that spawns it. The simplest way to see this in action is to observe the kind of comments you get on blogs and forums: if a blog is bimbotic and snarky, the comments on said blog are likely to be as bimbotic and snarky as the blogger herself; if the blog is thoughtful, the comments are likely to be longer and more considered than is the mean.

That is not to say that Facebook spawns users that are dumb (though Youtube, as a comparison, probably has one of the dumbest communities on the whole Internet) - rather, Facebook contains users of a particular kind. Facebook users are attuned to the vocabulary of the site: they are used to short, superficial posts, distracting little games, and plenty of profile-hopping and/or the clicking of random links sent by friends and family.

As an external developer, your app would be defined by this existing, attention-deficit community, and you'd probably lose your ability to set the tone of your site/app. This is important to consider: Flickr would have been a very different app had it launched in Facebook, the same way Facebook would have been a very different app had it launched in Flickr.

I'd like to close by saying that while Flixter may have found a wonderful match in Facebook, I am starting to wonder if it's worth it to build Treehouse within Facebook itself. Treehouse is constructed around three ideas: sharing, meaningful communication, and privacy, of which only one (sharing) is a match with Facebook's underlying philosophy. Would it be worth it to sacrifice brand and community for users? I'm not sure, but I'm willing to bet I'll find out, and soon enough.

N.B.: This may not apply to games, but just as a test - go to Kongregate and observe the vocabulary of the community clustered around the site. How different are they from Facebook, and which do you think is better?