Facebook has introduced its own friends app called FriendLists. This is the first time Facebook has released an application that directly competes with a third-party application. Slide, one of the two top owners of Facebook apps, already has the number one application, with about 13 million users (about a third of total number of Facebook users). With the introduction of FriendLists, Facebook may be aiming to take away a major part of the total number of users, which are now targeted by major Facebook app developers such as Slide or Rock You, and reserve those users for home grown applications.

Justing Smith, over at Inside Facebook did a very interesting analysis of the new developments on Facebook.

To sum it up Justin points out the following:

• this could dramatically simplify privacy controls
• this would mark the first time Facebook has moved to directly compete with a top Platform application

With this move Facebook may be saying it’s not intending to leave application development completely open to other developers. There may be significant developments planned by Facebook, and it’s almost certain application owners and developers such as Slide and Rock You may hinder those plans with a steady rise in the number of users using their applications.

Share This