Facebook hires a diplomat for its platform :: The Future of the Internet

Facebook hires a diplomat for its platform

July 14th, 2008 | by jz | Published in Book, Future of the Internet, Generativity | 2 Comments

Techcrunch is reporting that Facebook has poached Elliot Schrage from Google as its new VP of Communications and Public Policy, and that one of Elliot’s jobs will be to manage the Facebook development platform, where outsiders can write code to run on Facebook — from the bitten-by-a-vampire app to Scrabulous.

Techcrunch speculates that this reflects a realization that much of the Platform is political, not technical. Because the architecture naturally allows Facebook to control which apps run, and how they run — a big difference from the relationship of a traditional PC OS maker to PC app developers — someone able to act sensitively to public and political opinion would be helpful. Facebook, like other Web 2.0 software-as-service counterparts like Google Apps, is entering the governance business. It’ll be interesting to see how decisions will be made — or even if we can see how decisions are made — about what is banned and what is not.

Recently SuperWall was put in the dock, and Secret Crush was killed several days after Wired reported that it came bundled with spyware (and the maker, Zango, denied).

We’ll see the same phenomenon with the new iPhone apps platform, where Apple reserves the right to determine what will run and what won’t. Adam Thierer over at Tech Liberation points to the hacking of the latest iPhone as evidence that we’re not about to enter an era of centralized control. Putting aside that case for the iPhone — as a tethered device it can always be reflashed by Apple to eliminate hacks, especially those installed by non-techies just trying to double-click on something to run an unapproved app — it’s much more difficult to hack software-as-service platforms with apps not desired by the platform makers.

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The iPhone kill switch :: The Future of the Internet — And How to Stop It says:

August 14th, 2008 at 6:48 pm (#)

[...] the other side of the spectrum, when Facebook kills an app the app is naturally not only unavailable to new users, but disabled for current ones, too. So [...]
Blogroll » The iPhone kill switch says:

September 29th, 2008 at 5:45 am (#)

[...] the other side of the spectrum, when Facebook kills an app the app is naturally not only unavailable to new users, but disabled for current ones, too. So [...]

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About Jonathan Zittrain

Jonathan Zittrain is Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and co-founder of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School

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