Facebook’s new guidelines are not a racket unless toll roads are too
Techcrunch characterized Facebook’s new developer guidelines as a racket. I am afraid that I just can’t agree here. I think it is actually a bit more like a toll road. Facebook is the big, limited access, toll road. If you want to get on and use the toll road you have to pay. Or another way to look at it is they are like getting your public health inspection done each year. Restaurants pay for that, and we are happy that they do. Facebook incurs costs with the applications that run on their platform – they undoubtedly get some benefit from those apps. However, I don’t begrudge them the opportunity to get more revenue for themselves and I think it will help the app community as well by eliminating some of the chaff. If it cuts down the apps to 5000 new ones per month, then that is likely good for the community as a whole, and Facebook gets nearly $2M. I mean come on; it’s not at all clear they are making a profit now anyway. Let them figure out ways to do so.