April 2nd, 2012 by Sten Franke
Years ago Mark Zuckerberg surprised with his notion of turning Facebook into its own systems software, on which all applications run and get connected that Homo Sapiens 2.0 needs for his happy and fulfilled web existence.
Pinterest, Glancee, or BranchOut: Why Facebook is its own internet for long
In spite of all discussions about the new timeline, or the question which brand has most fans, it has been lost sight of Facebook’s continuation of exactly this project. Or rather: how it lets others continue it. Indeed in the past months a multiplicity of new web and mobile applications emerged that turn personal data of Facebook into a decisive part of their own network. That’s how Facebook is becoming the foundation of a whole new generation of fresh social networks and offerings.
Pinterest, Glancee, or BranchOut: Why Facebook is its own internet for long
The two most popular ones surely are Pinterest and Spotify. But there are further thrilling networks: For instance the business networks BranchOut and Identified. “Identified already has 2.9 Mio monthly users, according to numbers by AppData, BranchOut even 11.2 Mio – to be on a par with Xing”, Basic Thinking has investigated. “Both Apps give something to Facebook users that the social network has missed out on: a formal career network besides the fun.”
Pinterest, Glancee, or BranchOut: Why Facebook is its own internet for long
Applications like Highlight and Glancee, for their part, offer a lot of fun. To Marcel Weiss they are “a perfect example of which new things become possible at the intersection of mobile and social web”.
Highlight and Glancee, in his opinion, distinguish themselves “by not only taking the relations of Facebook and tell who of their friends or of their friend’s friends is near (which is how Sonar.me works). They also use the data of their ‘likes’ to point to individuals sharing their interests.”
Pinterest, Glancee, or BranchOut: Why Facebook is its own internet for long
From a social media intelligence point of view these offerings are an incredibly fascinating field, as they access a multitude of data that the Facebook-API supplies. This demonstrates the value of the user information the US-network provides.
