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Is Facebook’s Platform a Strategic Mistake?

March 5, 2008
by David Gal
Assistant Professor of Management, Northwestern University

David Gal

Last year, Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg suggested that a PC operating system was the inspiration for Facebook’s new “Platform.” With Platform, anyone could write applications for Facebook. Facebook’s in-house applications would get no special treatment, he declared. The analogy to an operating system is appealing. For many years Microsoft’s Windows operating system has benefited from the large number of applications written by outside developers. People buy Windows, not necessarily because it is the best operating system, but because it has the most applications. Like Microsoft, Facebook does not have a monopoly on great ideas nor unlimited bandwidth, and a platform ostensibly allows Facebook to leverage the talents of the entire developer community to its benefit.

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