Facebook invites software developers to build applications and businesses to open retail spaces on the social-networking site.
San Francisco – Facebook, the Internet’s second-largest social network, based in Palo Alto, Calif., is finally inviting thousands of technology companies and software developers to contribute features to its service — a move that comes three years after rival MySpace jumped to a staggering lead in social networking largely by throwing the doors open to outside services.
The company’s 23-year-old founder and chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, said the move was similar to what Microsoft did decades ago, when the relatively obscure software maker began encouraging third-party companies to write programs for its personal computer operating system.
MySpace executives may yawn, but Facebook is also going to allow other companies to open retail services and advertise on the site, added Zuckerberg at a media event here.
"You can serve ads…or if you do not want to advertise, you can just sell something," Zuckerberg told an audience of journalists and outside developers, and, at least for now, Facebook will not take a cut.
The strategy made Microsoft phenomenally profitable and helped turn founder Bill Gates — like Zuckerberg, a Harvard University dropout — into world’s richest man.
This contrasts sharply with MySpace’s philosophy. It is against MySpace rules for anyone other than MySpace to advertise on the site.
At the core of Facebook’s new plans is the debut of Facebook/f8, a platform that allows anyone to build applications for social computing. The company is hoping that its 23 million monthly users and the opportunity to create for-profit businesses will attract developers to build a host of new networking services on top of the f8 infrastructure.
"Until now, social networks have been closed platforms," Zuckerberg told about 750 programmers attending the company’s first developer conference, dubbed f8. "We are going to end that."
Some of the new features, demonstrated by software developers at a Facebook event here, will allow members to recommend and listen to music, insert Amazon.com book reviews onto their pages, play games and join charity drives, all without leaving the site.
MySpace, its biggest rival, has 67 million active members who spend an average of 30 minutes on the site each time they visit.
MySpace, owned by News Corp., has fostered an anarchic aura with few restrictions on creativity while allowing users to integrate tools, such as slide show displays, from other companies into their pages.
With an ambitious strategy for expansion, the result is expected to be a proliferation of new tools and activities for Facebook’s 23 million active users, who have largely been limited to making online connections, sharing photos and planning events.
Beginning Thursday night, Facebook announced that users will be able to equip their profiles with 65 new services, including photo slide shows (Slide), a music recommendation service (iLike) and a music player (Uber). A new video application will allow Facebook users to send video messages directly to friends within Facebook.
onetheless, Owen Van Natta, Facebook’s chief operating officer, appeared to acknowledge that Facebook needed to one-up MySpace to attract developers.
"We needed a competitive edge," Van Natta said. "We want to create the most attractive site for developers to develop applications and a big part of that is to allow them to build businesses."
Facebook has long been rumored to be for sale. Asked whether that was true Zuckerberg said, "I have always thought that Facebook should remain independent and this just strengthens that."
"We are the sixth most trafficked site in the U.S. and we cannot seem to get our act together," Zuckerberg joked as he fumbled to synchronize his presentation slides, which were in disarray.
After laughs from the crowd, he regained his composure and added, "We recently passed eBay in traffic and we are working on passing Google, too."
The Palo Alto-based start-up has so far recruited about 65 companies to create software for the Facebook Platform, which will be opened up to any company starting Thursday night.