Facebook as a platform a bad thing?

Within this excellent article about Zynga's rise on the back of other companies innovations is a mention of the dangers of facebook as a primary platform. It seems that the investors and stock insurance company involved with Zynga decided that a major downside to their otherwise very lucrative business was their reliance on facebook which funnels the vast vast majority of the traffic to their site.

The question: is relying on facebook for your platform a bad thing? It would seem the answer is yes and the pitfalls many and obvious: lock-in to single platform and userbase, privy to the whims of the owners of facebook, and no guarantee of service. However I think if you look beyond the surface level concerns, using facebook as a platform might be a smart, and stable, decision.

Although being restricted (if only by user preference) to a single social network would seem bad, you couldn't find a better platform to be locked in to. Facebook boasts over 500 Million active users, or roughly 1/2 the expected internet population of only a few years ago, and is posed to remain an active and important part of life on the internet well into the future. Even if facebook crashes and burns tomorrow the concept of the social network will continue to live on and Zynga would have no issues moving over to another platform. This is of course dependent on the 3rd party platform stance of the next hypothetical social network company, but it's a good bet to assume that a similar infrastructure would be required to cerate a successful enterprise.

And while Zynga is thrall to facebook's whims and decisions, it is not itself without clout. When facebook decreed that all micro-transactions within it's network must be made with facebook credits, of which facebook would get a 30% cut, Zynga threw their weight around and worked out a solution that was more amenable to it's bottom line and facebook's desire for their traffic. Other companies, much smaller companies, are much more susceptible to this issue but have little choice in the matter; for them it's play ball or go home.

The main point is that facebook is no longer just a website or a social network, it's a parallel internet and along with that designations comes all of the bad and good. It's continued survival depends on cultivating a 3rd party platform that remains open (within their specifications) and creating an ecosystem with consistent and relatively fair rules. It very much like the internet itself, except viewed through money-colored glasses. That's not necessarily a bad thing either. Social networking is clearly here to stay. Like forums, e-mail, IM, and blogging it will likely hit a peak and then recede into a comfortable and profitable level of use that provides a large enough platform for several players to develop. If facebook dies tomorrow another network will spring up in it's place and take with open arms the users, developers, and yes Farm Games that make up Zynga's bread and butter.