Facebook as a platform, pt 1

(The next couple of posts have very little to do with bioinformatics - sorry).

I've been trying out a whole bunch of online social networks this year in the name of research (no, really). LinkedIn is the most boring. Bebo, which has a widget that suggested that my celebrity lookie-likie is Whoopi Goldberg, is the weirdest. MySpace is just scary.

Facebook is pretty good, though. The design is grown up and so is the userbase (relatively speaking). Nature has a group there to help point young scientists towards some of the less obvious services that NPG provides (like free drinks at Nature Network meetups - if you're in London then come along). Facebook were the first big social network to release an API and now they've gone a step further and opened up Facebook as a platform.

I was pretty excited by this announcement. Facebook works brilliantly as a social platform - will 3rd parties add features that'll enable it to compete in the 'professional' social networking arena too?