New Facebook Platform Opening Creative Doors

Since its inception in 2004, Facebook has been the younger sibling of social networking giant MySpace. Facebook differentiated itself by only offering membership to individuals with a .edu email address. However, the social network's original stance of isolationism was broken in 2006 when Facebook opened its doors to the general public, resulting in a 24 million person community. Since then, Facebook has been gaining in popularity and momentum, threatening to catch up to the leviathan MySpace. However, some features and applications available to the MySpace crowds naturally kept the social network a clear leader. Personalization options such as the ability to upload music, ala individual soundtracks, and video differentiated MySpace from its plain-Jane counterpart. Then May 24th rolled around, signaling the launch of Facebook's new platform: user generated applications. Adding applications similar to MySpace applications, users coupled with a number of additional applications designed to expand Facebook from a social network to an outlet that will give the average user the ability to build applications for social computing. CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg explains his aspirations for the new platform, stating that "We want to make Facebook into something of an operating system so you can run full applications." Applications that are developed outside of Facebook will also be made available to all members, provided they meet the legal requirements. With over 85 applications immediately available, including video and music programs to rival MySpace, an explosion of programming creativity and Facebook activity is expected on the horizon.