If there was any doubt about the new development paradigm that Facebook ushered in last summer with the launch of the Facebook Application Platform, all dissent was crushed this week with Apple’s launch of the iPhone SDK and MySpace’s recent launch of their own application development platform. With these recent announcements, the viability of allowing individual developers free reign on proprietary platforms was significantly strengthened.

While individual developers have always had creative ideas and innovations, they historically lacked a channel by which to bring their creations to the masses in an easy and efficient manner. With the floodgates now opened, individual developers and small teams from around the world can now develop innovative applications in just days/weeks and then leverage these channels to gain a mass following sometimes even hours after launch. You no longer must be working for a global development company with footprint in major retail chains or a large online marketing presence to market your wares. The opportunities for creation and distribution are now easily at the fingertips of any aspiring developer. It certainly is an exciting time for both these developers, as well as consumers, who will reap the benefits of all these new innovations.

But there’s always a catch, right? With everyone and their dog having access to these new channels, consumers are going to be overwhelmed with choice and bombarded with new applications left and right (as if I need to allude to the problems that Facebook has had with controlling the spam around applications). What application developers must do to really establish a quality and loyal user-base and wade through the influx of applications is to create applications that deliver immediate benefits (since modern Internet users generally have the attention span of a 5-year old) while providing real and lasting value to consumers.

Tags: Apple, Facebook, Marketing, MySpace, Social Network // Add Comment »