One of my favorite songs of all time is playing in my head, “Back to Where it All Began” by the Allman Brothers. Why? Because Facebook's announcement recently of more than 60 new apps into the Open Graph, including Pinterest, eBay and Foursquare, among dozens of others, enabling users to add anything they want, including their activities, into their timelines, is the most exciting opportunity for non-gaming developers to take advantage of the Facebook platform since its launch in 2007.
Over the years we've seen "Lifestyle" applications on Facebook lose ground to games, those with huge ad budgets or incredible viral loops. The day-to-day applications about family, travel, entertainment and pets that were so exciting in 2008 had begun to fade into oblivion. Until, last week and moving forward. These types of applications just got a new breath of fresh air.
While social gaming has been a phenomenon in and of itself, I've always wondered why Facebook didn't encourage more lifestyle and interest-based activity to be built-up on their platform. Not having this has forced many developers to focus on their web strategy instead of their Facebook strategy, and given way to the growth of sites like Pinterest, which was one of the 60 partnerships announced.
But, maybe taking one step at a time was the right approach. Now that Facebook has changed gaming forever, they can continue with their disruption one industry at a time.
I'm excited about what will be next. We’ve sold advertising for many of the original lifestyle applications in 2008 and 2009, and continue to do so through our adtivity platform. I hope to see them succeed with the timelines integrations and the sharing of activity is further evidence the future of media is an active, rather than passive one.
