I was spending my last weekend reading and hacking the codes of Facebook. I am not a FB junkie but after hours of experimenting this Internet social space, I have my faith that it is going to be huge. Well, I know it is huge for quite some time now. But there is a difference between I know and I believe.

Social networking isn’t new to me but it fails to connect me for years. My first social experience on cyberspace was the bulletin board system, a.k.a. BBS, which I had fun with those X-modem and Z-modem things before the WWW. They are history now. So we pass it.

My second experience of connecting people through journal and photos on the web came to me through Geocities. It was the facebook in 1994. Geocities was later acquired by Yahoo in 1999. Back then, the web was a new mean for content publishing. It was fun to show off the blinking and blinging homepage, but the experience wasn’t interactive nor reciprocal. This distinguishes the Internet social space now and then.

Actually, what brings me to FB isn’t the numerous invitations sent by my friends. Soon after Zuckerberg decided to open his platform, his move caught my attention. It was the FB developer platform which connected me and made me start FB-ing everyday.

When you look at the technical components of FB and see how they have set things ready to go and prepare the developers to take off, it is truly amazing. If you have been in the tech community for long enough, you should know the whole paradigm shift is moving towards the materialization for the concept of universal application container. I truly believe that the open social spaces will be the second universal container after the invention of web browser. No, search isn’t the second one. Search is an application and it is designed to divert traffic. Social network on the contrary is meant to be absorbing traffic.

Alright, if you have a geek mind, go to the FB developer platform, join the 38,000+ developers, and start exploring the FB ecosystem. I have done some experiments to sync up my blog with FB. The interoperability is good. Here are two blogger tools that help me to get my job done: Wordbook and Statuspress, and a list of more. Make your own attempt.

Here is a list of 30 popular FB Apps. Here is my first FB App And here is the FB copycat in China. By the time you read this, Myspace has confirmed it will follow FB to launch the Myspace open developer platform. The social networks are really pushing the Internet envelope to a farther limit.

If you have a marketer mind, for sure the open social spaces have something even more exciting for you. Stay tuned, I will be blogging about FB marketing in my next post. Before I end this one, let me give you some parameters for brainstorming your next marketing plan,

- 95% of “heavy” social network users also visited a online storefront in last August.
- Social network users are more inclined to experience sharing and opinion exchange.
- Social network users are more receptive to online advertising.
- The ownership of technology for social network users are higher than those who have never visited a social networking site.

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