Bebo opens up to application development
December 13th, 2007 Jason Posted in social networking |
It’s all the rage today: Bebo announces the “Open Application Platform” which will allow existing Facebook applications to easily port into apps for Bebo as well.
Good on them. While the article notes Bebo is a “distant third” in the US market, in the UK Bebo is generally seen to have a bigger reach than MySpace (supporting article on NewMedia.com from August 2007, though by some accounts it’s down to how you slice the data - see September article on paidContent.co.uk). For everyone who’s been banging away on Facebook apps being the new “must-have” marketing tool, the opportunity has now just doubled.
Here’s what caught my eye, though:
“Deployments of the same applications on both Facebook and Bebo will have the potential to link up with each other. For example, Facebook users of Bunchball’s Nitro gaming application will be able to play against Bebo users of the same application.”
As I think I’ve said before, needing to keep track of a dozen different online network profiles is a total pain in t’ass. With the recent announcement of Google’s OpenSocial APIs, and the opening of the Facebook platform, we’re two steps closer to having online networks really start mirroring the interaction and crossover that happens between networks in real life.
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