Startable – Healy Jones’ & Prasad Thammineni’s Blog

What should greet me my return from vacation but yet another piece of real spam in my Facebook account. Similar to the Facebook virus/spam I wrote about earlier, this spam appeared as a message from a friend. This time I was directed to a random website that claimed to be a youtube video, although it clearly was not. This feels more like a virus (vs. traditional Facebook application “join me” spam) because the message was generated without her consent and directed the target user away from Facebook and to a site that was likely selling something or that had a malicious intent. It’s evil junk marketing generated without the user’s consent.

I’ve been excited by and met with a number of Web 2.0 startups who are planning on having an open API, and who believe that this will enable them to more nimbly develop relationships with their customers. I hope that this promise will not be destroyed by malicious developers who exploit the openness of Web 2.0.

It would really bum me out if Facebook became over run with nasty spammy messages like most of my email accounts have… I hope the folks at Facebook can find a way to keep their system open and yet avoid having virus writers and spam marketers take advantage of them.

When Facebook opened their API last year to outside developers they seriously accelerated their business and became the face and forward thinker of the real Web 2.0 movement. Supposedly in 2007 alone 12,000 applications were generated on the Facebook platform. The key to the success of the platform is that outsiders are trusted to help direct the evolution of a company’s relationship with their customers.

However, I am fearful that it won’t be long before the spammers of the world find ways to exploit this openness. Given the huge amount of resources (financial and people) that Facebook has I believe that they will find a way to fight against this threat. But will it be at the expense of openness? Probably. Remember, other big internet players such as Microsoft and Google still struggle to protect their email users from spam – and they have thrown enormous resources at the problem. The trick for smaller Web 2.0 startups who are opening their systems will be for them to protect their experience and remain open, but to do so without using tons of resources.

Startups considering an open API similar to Facebook should be wary of how much effort they will have to use to police the outside developers using their system. I’d suggest that the level of openness should be balanced against the level of spam tolerance that the startup’s users will have. It is likely that teen and young adult focused sites will have higher levels of spam tolerance than young children or more mature adult sites. I’d also be surprised if business users wouldn’t have seriously lower spam tolerance sites than consumers, particularly if business users feel that the spam indicates that their private business data held within the service is being compromised.