Facebook Updates: Picture and Videos on Yo’ Wall
In another Microsoft-reminiscent swoop to incorporate third-party application features into Facebook itself, the Facebook Blog just announced the extension of wall posts into the realms of pictures and video. Cool.
Unfortunately, I don’t have enough money for a fancy MacBook or Sony Vaio, so I can’t do some field reporting with PhotoBooth (or the Sony equivalent).
This is all great and is an expected improvement. The thing that’s most concerning, however, is that Facebook seems to be squashing smaller, original third-party apps. The Super Wall Application, a third-party application with an identical feature-set that boasted 2,849,543 total users today, will inevitably suffer. Sure, these wall additions are nothing major. But the limited potential of Facebook applications allows the big (and maybe bad?) Facebook to copy any idea willy-nilly. And Facebook is the landlord. So when fancy-pants analysts say that Facebook is the next Microsoft, they could be right, but not in the way they originally thought.
We’ll keep an eye out for you, Facebook. Until then, I’m going to litter my friends walls with pictures of kittens.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kelly Sutton is a software engineer at blip.tv in New York City. During his days at Loyola Marymount University , he founded HackCollege. He earned degrees in film production and computer science (and took a fifth year). Kelly started HackCollege in August of 2006. While in school, Kelly was involved in Crimson Circle, a service organization at LMU; played on Laser Squad Bravo , the campus improv team; ran the underground media outlet, Fuck Yeah LMU ; and taught LMU's first Web video class and held odd jobs around campus throughout his tenure. Kelly started HackCollege in August of 2006. While in school, Kelly was involved in Crimson Circle, a service organization at LMU; played on Laser Squad Bravo , the campus improv team; ran the underground media outlet, Fuck Yeah LMU ; and taught LMU's first Web video class and held odd jobs around campus throughout his tenure. Kelly held some pretty awesome internships throughout college at Automatic Duck , Revision3 and blip.tv. He is quite the weird guy. He sold all of his possessions through his site, Cult of Less . The world apparently cared, along with the BBC, NBC Nightly News, CBC and Der Spiegel. Kelly is also a founder of LayerVault , a simple version control service for designers. Kelly has spoken at a few conferences including South by Southwest , 140conf and Trandmediale . Although he finds the word dirty, Kelly has consulted for many projects including TakePart , a subsidiary of Participant Media ( An Inconvenient Truth , The Cove , Syriana ) and Capture Your Flag . He has also published his very own guide to Berlin. Kelly is @ KellySutton on Twitter. Kelly can be reached at [email protected]
