Be Wary of Building your Business on Facebook

Facebook has become something of an enigma. By allowing third party developers to integrate their applications (including games like Family Feud, Backyard Monsters and the various "ville" games), Facebook has become the leader in community networks without being much different otherwise than the rest. There is a danger, however, of building your business on top of Facebook and it's the reason I will never integrate any part of what I do with Facebook.

Twitter as an Example

Recently, the owners of Twitter told some third party developers that they could no longer use Twitter for their Twitter-based applications. I don't know the names and whether they were money-making parties or not, but it proves that hinging your business on top of another business is a precarious position to be in.

On the other hand, there are some specific applications that wouldn't exist without Twitter (and still exist) and I suppose there may be some contract between them and the owners of Twitter. The problem I have with Twitter is that Twitter wouldn't be as nearly as popular as it is without some of the third party developers they've decided to cut off.

Other Facebook Applications

Like Twitter, there are some applications which wouldn't exist without being integrated with Facebook. After all, there are more than half a billion users on Facebook and without that exposure, those businesses probably wouldn't be operating as well as they are.

Facebook even allows their commenting system to be integrated in external applications, like WordPress blogs. Now, I know people who have integrated that system into their blogs and I know people who have built Facebook landing pages to bolster their websites. There are a couple of things these people are overlooking and it's possible they're doing it intentionally, but I have no way of knowing what they're thinking.

There are other commenting systems, not associated with Facebook, that operate in a similar manner. The problem with the comments is that the website owner using them does not own the comments. If one of the services decides to shut down with hundreds of your comments, those comments are gone.

Another problem is that those commenting systems may add "commentary" value to your website, but they don't offer search engine value. They don't get indexed along with your website by any of the search engines (at least not yet) because they're behind a login. Finally, in the case of Facebook comments, you can only get comments from people who are members of Facebook. Now, a half a billion people may seem like a lot, but it's nothing compared to the world population (especially if you consider those with multiple profiles). Do you really want to limit commenting to people on Facebook?

Building a Business on Top of another Business

I don't know if I've gotten my point across or not, but it's simply this: If you build your business (even if that business just happens to be a blog) on top of another business, you're in a precarious position because you're at the mercy of that business. If you're relying on this method for your livelihood, you have another point of possible failure to contend with.

I don't know about you, but I prefer to keep my chances of failing limited to the things I have control of and using Facebook (or Twitter or any other business) to bolster my own business is something I refuse to do.

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