Facebook has contacted all the application developers that have applied for a new grant program announced at the TechCrunch40 conference, called the fbFund, and told them they all submissions have been deleted and must be resubmitted. The first attempt at this unusual financial plan to support the most over-hyped online phenomenon of the year (the FB platform) had to be reset and tried again. Applications were originally accepted by email, which quickly proved to be an unworkable solution. Allen Stern has posted the full email from Facebook at CenterNetworks.
Standard statements were added to the grant program concerning privacy and competition; Facebook won’t guarantee that your application will be kept private or that they won’t build the same thing themselves. Those may not be shocking revelations but the risk that Facebook may develop the same functionality that you have is something that the top app developers have to live in fear of.
Facebook is clearly learning as they go. The platform and company in general are likely to someday be seen as far less revolutionary or effective as they are often said to be today. The newsfeed is just RSS without the acronym and less functionality; the platform is just a highly controlled API effectively leveraged by only a handful of elite apps on an otherwise airtight social network. None the less, stay tuned for more Facebook posts on all your favorite tech blogs!
