Difference between Microsoft ecosystem and Facebook ecosystem
Business Strategies, Open Standards, Web 2.0 & Semantic Web Add commentsWhen the facebook platform was opened to public last week, everyone was comparing it to how Microsoft built its ecosystem. But there is one subtle difference between the Microsoft’s approach to their ecosystem and facebook’s approach. Microsoft tried their best to promote their apps over the other third party apps. They integrated their apps much more closely to their platform and had many apps pre installed on their platform. However, facebook didn’t try to promote their apps over the other third party apps. They allowed their apps to compete on a level playing field with third party apps. Except for some of the apps they had from the time before their platform announcement, all their apps appears in the same application directory available for other third party applications. I feel that facebook has shown better ethics than Microsoft in building an ecosystem around their platform. Kudos to facebook for this.
Observed from the Ali Partovi’s interview on VentureBeat.
May 30th, 2007 at 12:28 pm
Great point, Krishnan. Facebook will have a lot of pressure on them to act more like Microsoft down the road, I think. We’ll see how it all shakes out. -Eric
May 30th, 2007 at 12:30 pm
Yes. We have to wait and see how they shake out the pressures.
May 30th, 2007 at 12:33 pm
You will also notice that Microsoft has made moves in this direction - IE7 allows you to choose your default search provider, and even Google is a fully-supported option.
May 30th, 2007 at 12:49 pm
Daniel, I agree that IE7 allows us to choose the default search provider. But there is a subtle difference with the facebook approach. Even though you can change the default search engine to Google, the default engine out of the box is Microsoft’s live search. I wish they had given an option to the user to select when they install IE7 or use it for the first time in the case of pre-installed versions.
May 30th, 2007 at 1:28 pm
Great point, Krishnan. Facebook will have a lot of pressure on them to act more like Microsoft down the road, I think. We’ll see how it all shakes out.
-Eric
May 30th, 2007 at 1:30 pm
Yes. We have to wait and see how they shake out the pressures.
May 30th, 2007 at 1:33 pm
You will also notice that Microsoft has made moves in this direction - IE7 allows you to choose your default search provider, and even Google is a fully-supported option.
May 30th, 2007 at 1:49 pm
Daniel, I agree that IE7 allows us to choose the default search provider. But there is a subtle difference with the facebook approach. Even though you can change the default search engine to Google, the default engine out of the box is Microsoft’s live search. I wish they had given an option to the user to select when they install IE7 or use it for the first time in the case of pre-installed versions.