Facebook Applications are so 2007

  When Facebook released their application platform last year it was revolutionary and a slew of businesses popped up out of nowhere.  A number of these business got huge valuations and outside funding, some even made some money.  But now that the dust has settled from the landgrab and the competitors have caught up with their own offerings (with a varying degree of success) what's next for the app platform?  Well, from where I sit, it looks like it's being retired.

The 'beta' features such as the Data Storage apis have had almost no movement in over a year, the api itself hasn't had any drastic changes (except for the ones do to the new layout) in months, what's been going on?  It used to be that notices would be posted on a weekly basis about updates and new features, now there's nothing.  The chatter around the Facebook platform is dying down to a dull hum.

Applications are pushed out of the main page, multiple clicks away, the directory is bloated with thousands and thousands of pointless applications, how are you supposed to make a mark?  Facebook started out with an 'anything goes' policy for applications, when things started turning into a blue and white version of Myspace they realized their mistakes and clamped down on the restrictions making it impossible for new applications to break in.

Facebooks Solution:  Facebook Connect

Connect seems to be the solution to the broken application platform.  Instead of embedding your application into Facebook you can now have users login through your website to Facebook and allow your application to access their data.  So basically all their doing is Single Sign On and a standard api to access the users data.  What's revolutionary about this?  Nothing.  That $15 billion dollar valuation is seeming more ridiculous every day.

This doesn't mean Facebook applications are totally useless now, it just means there aren't going to be any business built solely on a Facebook app anymore.  Since the spotlights moved on, Facebook needs to work at becoming cash flow positive to make keep things rolling, unless they they can build another Hype Machine to bring back the interest.