The issues that ail Facebook Platform
We’ve all heard of all the great news about Facebook Platform, but are there any major issues that come along with it? Well, indeed there are.
When you’ve got the audience that Facebook has (20 million unique users each and every month, and counting) and you give them all access to your application, which is hosted on your own servers, then something has got to give if your application becomes even mildly popular.
An excellent case of this is the Facebook Application, “Where I’ve Been“, which allows you to create a map of the world and highlight what countries you’ve visited. The creator, Craig Ulliott, says that his application has been installed by nearly half a million users, and the bandwidth costs are nearing $500 a month. That’s a lot of money, considering that he doesn’t make a cent from the application (besides the fact that he solicits PayPal donations in the application).
One blogger believes that Facebook should start a revenue sharing program to help cover costs incurred by the application developer, to make it more fair. This sounds like an acceptable solution; I’d like to see independent developers be able to develop Facebook applications, let them become successful, and not run into issues paying for hosting when the application actually becomes popular.
