Martin Wells

Facebook goes from strength to strength, both in usefulness (in comparison to myspace especially) and in raw user numbers. But with the advent of f8 a few months back, Facebook is now showing it can be a home for a raft of new applications.

Like desktop operating systems did before it, Facebook is offering an operating environment that users find simple, safe and highly functional. I have easy sign-on, recommendations from friends, virus free and lots of social structure. It’s just that much easier… for the right application.

Unfortunately, that’s the kicker. Not all apps work. I don’t think we’ll be playing WOW inside facebook anytime soon. You can iframe apps, but you still have to exist within Facebook’s UI. So…

• Is Facebook an example of the ‘next’ platform for applications?
• Is Facebook going to get it right, or are they the precursor to something that does?
• Is Facebook’s API access to social data ultimately what becomes the platform?
• Is social meta-data the killer convenience of the next applications platform, or is there something else? (The rise of the lifestream perhaps?)

Let’s talk about it! Join the Tangler discussion.

[Thanks to BeFitt for the snazzy pic]

You’ll notice I’m starting to test embedding Tangler discussion with blog posts. Which sort of raises the question about the ultimate intention of Tangler and its fit with blogging.

Right now things are limited. Functionally there are some issues with posting from multiple sources at the same time (we’re working on that one). We also need to add some basic features, like:

• Infinite message scrolling - so only 100 or so messages are loaded (with more downloaded as you scroll down). Right now the topics fill up over time which will slow down the loading.
• RSS - this is not as easy as it sounds when you’re dealing with a real-time discussion system.
• Faster load times - we’re not too bad so far, but we’re going to work on a way to reduce load if you don’t actually join the discussion.
• Excerpts and linking - better support for the blog post to be presented as an excerpt in the Tangler post, with good linking between the two.

In the Tangler feedback group people have been asking about whether we intend to replace commenting. I like to think of it right now as an augment to commenting. Another way to contribute and interact with other readers.

Being a replacement for commenting is a more difficult thing to do, and I’m not even sure it’s ultimately the right thing to try and do (let’s not get into anonymous posts, trackbacks and inline scrolling). Right now we’re a great augment to comments. We’ll play around and see how that goes first.

Coming up soon is much tighter integration with blogging, including a wordpress plugin that auto-creates Tangler topics and adds the embed code to the bottom of the post. That’ll make it really easy to create a two-way relationship between a blog and a Tangle. Add in centralised tracking, a social structure, rss and an api and you have lots of possibilities, and a big messy tangle.

So tell me what you think, ironically by using the Tangler embed widget below.