Kottke is wrong -- Facebook isn't AOL; it's Visual Basic.

For about a year or two, i've been meaning to do a followup piece on how Google, Microsoft, & Yahoo all screwed the pooch by not building out a REAL web application OS worth developing apps for, but i'm too late.

GYM is Old & Busted. 

Facebook is The New Hotness.

It's really astonishing how much opportunity the big 3 GYM had to do something truly innovative, how many assets & properties & APIs they had to turn into great platforms, how many brilliant geeks & architects & programmers could have laid out a BIG VISION -- and yet how PATHETICALLY & AWFULLY they missed the mark & overlooked the biggest potential for the IntarWeb since Clarke & Andreesen birthed Mosaic.

(and btw eBay & Amazon also effed up too, but they never really had the right geek DNA... tho Bezos came closest with AWS/S3/EC2. Jeff really doesn't get credit for how brilliant a tech visionary he is.  Still think he should have kept A9 in, spun AWS out instead of the other way around, but whatever he's still as much of a  genius as Gates or Jobs)

But at this point, talking about how each of those 3 huge companies fucked up and missed the boat is really old news.   Facebook is the New Hotness, and everyone else is simply Scratching at the Door of Cool.

So i'm doing a different take on this one.  Kottke is dead wrong about Facebook being AOL, and even his wimpy backtracking is off the mark.  Jeremiah & Robert, i love you guys but i think your concerns are overstated.  Duncan Riley has it pretty close, but not quite...

Facebook isn't AOL.  It's Visual Basic.

Let me explain. 

I may act like a young turk/geek, but i'm actually over 40, so i might as well pull out the old skool.  Back in the day, i used to be a no-talent pc database developer. I couldn't code my way out of a paper bag.  My first paid programming gig was hacking dBase III, and when i came out to California in '89 i barely managed to score a job doing Sybase DB SQL app dev (& later got fired for writing poetry... long story, another time).

But in 1991, something happened that changed my life: Microsoft released Visual Basic.  Sure, it was probably a half-assed ripoff of NeXTstep's Interface Builder -- a truly beautiful & groundbreaking app dev environment, btw -- but with Microsoft pimping VB out to 100,000+ overachieving Excel jockeys like me, it was a GodSend.  In one resistance-is-futile Borg minute, i was EMPOWERED.  Suddenly i was on a level playing field with all those egotistical mofo C++ programmers who looked down their noses at Delta Geeks like me.  Why?  BECAUSE NOW I COULD PROGRAM IN WINDOWS.

and because of that, i was teh Shit.

I could drag & drop forms.  I could create multi-select listboxes.  I could create butt-ugly gray menu buttons, big as Rosie O'Donnell's ass.  I could create garish color schemes that only Richard Simmons would love.  And i could click on one simple menu option, and create an .EXE that was a windows app.

In short, Microsoft Visual Basic brought Windows Programming to the Huddled, Unwashed Masses (= me).  No more coding to the Windows API, no more reading tomes as thick as a telephone book to figure shit out, no more second-class geek citizen who got paid $20/hr for dBase III coding instead of $50+/hr for REAL MAN Windows development. 

And in the ensuing next few years, boy were there a lot of shit apps delivered.  I mean some real god-awful crap was built. And people paid good money for that garbage.  I'm not just talking about the excrement i created, but there were people who had NO GODDAMN BUSINESS doing programming who could all of a sudden build windows apps.  Folks who could barely fucking write an Excel Macro to sum a column were creating Windows programs.  Oh.  Mi.  Gawd.  It was TERRIBLE.  and yet, it was wonderful.

Microsoft gave all of us aching to be the alpha geek the chance to Live the Dream.  When Visual Basic was released, a hundred thousand n00bs like me got the equivalent of 6-inch heel lifts in our shoes. 

We were somebody, dammit.

And THAT was the beginning of the end for everyone else in the industry... NeXT, Apple, IBM, Borland, you name it.  Those other companies created wonderful, beautiful, incredibly awesome OS's & programming languages & tools.  But they DIDN'T CREATE A PLATFORM for the Everyman Joe Six-Geek to develop on. So they floundered.  And they lost market share.  And they ultimately FAILED -- at least, in becoming the platform that everyone ended up using.  Not because Microsoft was better.  Not because they cheated.  Not because they played hardball.  BECAUSE THEY CREATED A PLATFORM.  A simple platform.  A butt-ugly, pissant simple, just-good-enough app dev platform.

Fast Forward to May 24, 2007.

A few months ago, ~16 years after Visual Basic shipped, ~14 years after Mosaic shipped, ~12 years after eBay & Amazon & Yahoo created Act I of the Internet Revolution, and ~6 years after Google Adwords rolled out, Act II of the Internet Revolution just happened.

Kottke, you've got it wrong.  Facebook isn't AOL, cause AOL was never a simple platform.  It WAS a walled garden.  But it was also a piss-poor environment for building & developing apps. (but since no one had "email address fwdg", the lock-in was incredible).

Facebook -- or more accurately, the Facebook Platform -- is the equivalent of Visual Basic for the Web.

Because it provides a simple & easy way for anyone --ANYONE -- to build a quick & dirty little app that can be deployed quickly on Facebook.  Hell, i haven't coded anything more advanced than HTML in over 10 years, and *I* even got the basic tutorial app to run.

And that's why Facebook is going to dominate the Web. 

That's why they blew off Yahoo for a measly $1.6B.  That's why they'll bury Microsoft, and turn Ballmer down even if he offers $10B before the IPO.  And that's why they're even going to "fucking kill Google". 

Because Facebook is the first REAL web services platform worth building apps on.  Not to mention, their API has all the social graph info no one else has yet enabled.  Not to mention, the News Feed enables a whole new world of viral marketing.  But social networking mumbo jumbo aside, it's enough they've simply made it possible for anyone to build & deploy apps.

That's why they're not AOL.  And that's why they'll win. 

Welcome to Renaissance 2.0 :)

Comments

[Eric Marcoullier]

I think that Virtual Basic's direct contribution to the downfall of MS's competition is debatable. Software makes the platform and as you pointed out, the vast majority of VB-based software was pure shite.

Facebook has made a tremendous step here, but I'm still with Kottke on this one. The Facebook Platform is, if anything, VB for Facebook. I don't expect to be surfing any sites beyond FB any time soon seeing any apps built on the Facebook platform. Until then, the platform will be a great way for people to create short-term annuities, but probably not much more.

[Dave]

@Eric: ok, so maybe i'm a little over the top on VB *exclusively* being the downfall of all Microsoft's early 90's competitors, but Visual Basic was the onramp for a lot of folks to Windows, and i'd still maintain the Windows app dev environment in general (& Microsoft's developer evangelism specifically) was what created a critical mass of geeks building for the Windows platform.

If it was just the high-end apps that created success, well there were plenty of people building for Apple and DOS and OS/2 -- including Microsoft in fact. MS shipped Word & Excel for the Mac too. why didn't Apple win? everything was prettier, but it didn't become mainstream again until Steve got back in the saddle years later.

>>"Facebook Platform is... VB for Facebook"

well i totally agree there, but that's exactly my point. Facebook isn't focused on being *open*, they're focused on being *better*. (but to be accurate, they have made their API accessible outside FB as well, along with Facebook auth/login).

what i'd observe is that while some folks are complaining about Facebook being a walled garden, if the walled garden is big enough & full of water & plants & beautiful things & lots of other people (30M & growing), then why the hell do i care? why do i need to leave? what if the land outside the walled garden is an "open" but barren desert?

look i'm not apologizing for monopolists or closed societies here, i'm just saying that FB Platform is ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE better than what anyone else has done to date.

until someone comes up with a RICHER environment, open or closed Facebook is a better app dev platform. just like Visual Basic.

- dmc

[Jeremiah Owyang]

Great rant

And we said that AOL was going to dominate the web, the MS, the Google.

Things swing back and forth.

Everyone loves this picture of you BTW
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeremiah_owyang/853646549/

[bernard lunn]

This is the best "bull" case for Facebook I have read and their Parakey acquisition does start to convince me that they are for real and not just pumping valuation for an exit that makes turning down Yahoo's $1.6bn seem like a smart move. On that we can just wait and see.

My major scepticism is an old media issue - social media is lousy way to generate business versus search - no database of intentions and users too busy connecting with each other to read the ads. I have seen this viewed as old media thinking, but revenue has to come from somewhere - subscriptions or ads and I cannot believe it is going to be subscriptions.

I also think that social media may have reverse economy of scale - the more join the less useful/cool it becomes for the original members and audiences bifurcate.

Particularly if there is too much drive to monetize and marketeers get a chance to push their products (in ultra cool, student friendly, heavily embedded and disguised ways of course) and then the smart people leave the "mall" for cooler places to hangout.

My sense is that The Valley wants a big new success story to follow Google as well as a counterweight to Google. So lots of motivation and with an open API where small start-ups can make money maybe some kind of eBay economy will emerge. But when Microsoft was on the rise we saw lots of Microsoft killers get a lot of support and get nowhere.

Nobody wants dominance by one player, whether Microsoft or Google. If Facebook remains closed their support from developers/start-ups will fade once the hype phase recedes. If they really open up then it could be a big deal.

I have seen one market where closed won out against open despite all the players rooting for open. That was when Bloomberg refused to distribute their data as digital data feeds for other platforms to slice and dice. Bloomberg's demise was constantly predicted. They won by delivering a better service that really met the needs of traders. It was a classic focus, focus, focus story. If Facebook was focussed on one market - say college students - I could see them having that focus and just being the best. But being the best and most focussed for everybody on the planet...

[Steve Poland]

Dave -- nice read. Love the passion.

[Robert Gorell]

Dave,

Really exciting post... Definitely woke my head up this morning.

One thing, though... I don't see how Facebook will kill Google if they're not focusing on creating social environments as much as they are on delivery and distribution. For instance, they might even give the internet away for free if it suits them. Wouldn't take people long to get used to that...

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/07/our-commitment-to-open-broadband.html

[Mario Romero]

finally! someone who gets it, great post

[Peter C]

Interesting stuff, Dave. I had to compose a response. I hope Facebook is not the next Visual Basic, but the next LAMP.

http://www.chezpete.com/techblog/2007/07/20/facebook-is-the-next-______/

[Nate Westheimer]

How does FB's shooing of OpenID play into this? Wouldn't true "interoperability" be nice here? I've been hearing this grumbling.

[Dave Hodson]

Your enthusiasm for FB is oozing through my keyboard - I love it ... but "fucking kill Google"? Dunno about that, they have to at least get an ad model that works first...

[michael]

that is seriously the stupidest post I've read in eons.... they don't even have a f-ing revenue model that works.

You officially just became an idiot in my book (you were only tottering there before).

[nik cubrilovic]

I view visual basic as just an abstraction of the windows (or DOS) API. when you are dragging around interface components all that is happening is the IDE is writing the code for you. Visual Basic is an abstracted, event-driven and loosely typed development environment (language + libraries + IDE). It is more analogous to Javascript.

The visual basic equivalent on the web is using dreamweaver or radrails, or even Zoho Creator or DabbleDB (although they are data/CRUD driven, rather than event driven)

With Facebook, it is still BYO dev environment - and their platform doesn't give you much more than identity and distribution.

For the VB analogy to work, FB would have to complete the platform and provide the IDE components as well. They should build an Eclipse extension and let developers write Javascript apps that they will host. Only with that, and a sandbox environment, will it start to resemble what Visual Basic did on the desktop.

I am sure they will get there.

I agree that stating that Facebook is just AOL is very short sighted (when did AOL ever let third parties into their silo? or even open up their auth), but I don't think there is an equivalent metaphor either

[Dave]

@michael: kiss-kiss, love you too hon ;)

sweet. now i officially have haterz!

bring on them trolls, dammit. i need the page views.

ps - michael: if you think this is the ceiling on my idiocy you're sorely mistaken... i've got plenty more stupidity where that came from. can i sign you up for regular trolling? awesome.

hey mom! i've got a troll! i'm somebody!

- dave "tottering idiot" mcclure

[Adam]

Poll for "Facebook is the next..."
http://www.facebook.com/polls.php?poll_id=2426434977

[Justin Smith]

I was more of a PASCAL guy myself when I was just getting my sea legs :)

I agree with you Dave - not only is developing for Facebook so much fun because of the social testbed, but because any "n00b" can crank something out in a couple days! That's a powerful combination...

[Bryan Starbuck]

Great post and dead on. Microsoft's success in the past has come in waves as they do something successful. VB is one wave you talk about above. Full Dynamic HTML in IE version 4 was another (does anyone use Netscape Layers anymore?). There are several more...

Now is the time for Microsoft to build a platform for the web. ASP.NET so far is hitting a ceiling. Microsoft has so many architectural pieces already ready: C#/CLR, Avalon/WPF, etc.

What is different this time is that the base of Facebook isn't a platform. It is a web site that people come to every day. Then they built a platform on top.

This difference will make this generation of platforms different than in the past.

[will]

wow. . . thats a lot of comments, was gonna leave something insightfull but now I feel stupid :)

truly though, is facebook like java (value created but not captured) or google (value created AND later captured) . . . until is can be google, its still just all potential . . .

[Jeremiah Owyang]

Haters are a sign of POWER! You've crossed the tottering line!

[Industrial14]

Just curious what you would say to this article...

http://valleywag.com/tech/hypebusting/facebook-has-thrown-the-entire-startup-world-for-a-loop-273359.php

[Dave]

@Industrial14: # invites help, but not as important as application messaging / feed notification. also, # app users isn't necessarily the right metric -- app ACTIVITY is probably more important than installed base. i have lots of profile app bling, but only a few that i use actively.

in any case, the article link is from end of june, and there are already a number of apps that started since then that are doing pretty well -- ex: BoozeMail started 6/15, but still had pretty amazing growth after the dial down on invites, and is currently at 645K users, with a *daily* growth rate >7%. Advanced Wall started 6/21, has 550K users, daily growth rate >30% (in fact, looks like they figured something out recently that increased the growth rate in july).

there's also a bunch of Harry Potter related stuff that's just profile bling, started after end of June, and app installs are growing like crazy.

so in summary:
1) there are apps that started around/after the invite dialdown that are still growing like wildfire
2) measure app growth / virality purely based on # installs is probably a misleading metric... usage metrics (that aren't reported by FB) are probably better measures of user engagement.

again, i stand by my earlier point... app messaging & notifications are probably a lot more important than purely # invites.

[tunde]

you cant scroll down your blog for two seconds without advertising popping up.

[Paul Reilly]

Great rant, I think you've hit the nail on the head with this post. :)

[Kit Plummer]

But, wait there's one huge problem with the current FB API. It denies the potential for SPAM.

I know a few people who are using FB as their email replacement because messages can come in from of crap. But, the message display/INBOX is so old school...i'd rather use Pine.

No SPAM, no money. But, happy devers and users.

[Michael Weiksner]

Facebook = visual basic? Are you trying to trash facebook? I mean, I love visual basic as much as the next techie but was it transformational? I guess the point is that facebook is a platform, but there are more powerful platforms that have been created than visual basic!