This is an interesting story. Facebook appears to want Power.com to use its Facebook Connect technology, rather than another mode of accessing its content. Claire Cain Miller of the New York Times covers the news here.
This lawsuit illustrates a few things about the web.
First, Esther Dyson is everywhere. (See the earlier post about my fortunate meeting with her on January 1st.) She is an angel investor in Power.com.
Second, The Internationalization of Everything. Check this out from Power.com’s About Us page:
Headquartered in Rio de Janeiro Brazil, Power.com is a privately held company with 70 people. Power.com has additional offices in San Francisco, California and Hyderabad, India.
(Smart bunch of people running this company. I have a feeling I’ve met Igor Barenboim at some point in the past. Could be wrong, but the name is familiar somehow.)
Third, social network aggregation is coming, or at least trying to come. Power.com is a kind of aggregator of access to social networks, a meta-network or -portal that allows users to control various profiles from one place. Here is Matt Marshall’s thoughtful and thorough commentary on Power.com and the social network aggregation/access point landscape.
Fourth, the battle for real estate is not going away. Market leading or dominant companies like Facebook are understandably eager to control key access points. Some companies are not afraid to use closed standards to carve up parts of the web to maximize their revenue streams. Jonathan Zittrain, in his book The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It, observes what he views as a disturbing trend toward vendor-controlled architecture. (Zittrain’s argument has more to do with closed hardware platforms, but it might be applied to web-enabled software platforms, too.) Perhaps this suit is another step in that direction?
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Can’t fault Facebook on this. I mean, they *do* have clean, supported, well-documented public APIs; why break in with a pickaxe when the host is offering you a key?
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