Facebook Connect: The Operating System of the Future?

Facebook CEO Zuckerberg regularly handles the interviews where he's asked the same set of questions that boil down to one: How will Facebook make money? Zuckerberg has not answered the question to the satisfaction of many industry-watchers and Wall Street analysts. It could ultimately be Morin and his group that answer that tricky question. They remain out of the spotlight, steadfastly focused on a pretty heady mission: make Facebook the modern version of the operating system, an OS that makes the Web fundamentally social across all sites and applications.

If the next wave of Internet wars takes place between Facebook and Google, Connect might be Facebook's strongest weapon, leading the company to focus mightily on building out ways to support sites that work with Connect, Rafer says. Both Facebook and Google have ripped pages from Bill Gates' Microsoft approach of being the first-stop on a user's computing experience. Google says the modern day operating system, or at least the starting off point on the Web, starts with search. Facebook believes it starts with people connected via social networking.

Despite the criticisms of Facebook's fall 2008 redesign and their governance of it, Morin and his group emphasize the importance of the developer community in this effort. Unlike some past technology gurus, they also admit their own mistakes.

"We've definitely had to change," says Charlie Cheever, senior engineer at Facebook. "One of the mottos of engineering these days has been to iterate quickly and get some feedback once it goes into the wild. Especially as a company, but really with the platform stuff, we've had to move away from that. All these changes have consequences," Cheever says. "If you're a developer and all the sudden your app breaks, your revenue stream is cut off. That's a much bigger deal than if you can't look at your party pics for a few hours."

As evidenced by the games and other playful applications that currently dominate the Facebook landscape, the Facebook operating system remains nascent. But Morin and Cheever think the seeds have been planted for the platform to blossom into something more sophisticated with Facebook Connect. While Connect enables Facebook users to log into other websites with their Facebook accounts, that's really just the beginning of its potential. It also allows Facebook users to bring their profile information to other sites that their Facebook friends use. Showing signs of the platform's plans to mature, Facebook also partnered with Salesforce.com to allow business software developers to migrate their Web-based applications to the Facebook platform.

"Being able to be that operating system for the internet and adding social context is something that we're excited to be doing," Morin says.

"We want to make it very transparent as to what people are doing all around the Web and life in general," Cheever adds. "My dream is that I should be able to go to a travel site like Orbitz and when I go buy a plane ticket and see the seat diagram, I could go, "'Hey, there's Chris, he's on the same plane as me. Why don't I sit near him.'"

Facebook has taken steps to help developers prepare for past and upcoming changes to the technology, Morin says. Facebook set up a developer wiki to document changes. Cheever adds that they push new platform releases to developers a day early. The company helps facilitate Facebook developer garages, which are essentially local meet ups around the world where developers discuss best practices as well as the challenges and opportunities facing the community. Facebook has full-time partner managers who communicate with the bigger app firms like Slide and RockYou. Facebook also hired employees whose sole job it is to monitor developer forums online.

"We had to learn a lot about communicating and making sure developers always have access to the information they need to ensure that their businesses are sustainable for the long term," Morin says.

Staff writer C.G. Lynch can be reached at clynch@cio.com.