Once upon a time, Facebook released an application platform. There followed a gold rush, a frantic summer where everyone tried to release Facebook applications. Some hit it big, going from zero to millions of users in a matter of weeks. Soon, the number of applications became so large (and Facebook became so good at plugging every spammy hole which applications used and abused to spread) that the rate of success of new apps approached zero. The golden age was over. Some hailed the end of toy apps and hoped that soon, Facebook applications would turn business-like and herald a new era of social-network-enabled productivity.
But it never happened.
We don't think so. There's a significant difference between mobile phones and Facebook. Facebook is by its nature a toy. It's a very neat toy, that allows you to keep track of your friends and share pictures of your last holiday, but it remains firmly set in the personal sphere. Photos of you lying on the beach simply don't mix with business. So there was never any demand for "serious" applications on Facebook. This is why the Facebook business apps never arrived.
Mobile phones are very different, as far as platforms go. People already use mobile phones for business - in fact, for most people out there, mobile phones are absolutely essential to their daily business. As mobile phones turn more and more into portable computers, it is only natural that many business apps would migrate there. Email already made the leap years ago with the Blackberry, but most other business applications are still stuck on the desktop. As phone interfaces get better, more existing business activities can and will migrate into the mobile world.
But that's not all. Having computers available to us at all opened up a whole world of fundamentally new ways to get things done. Having computers available to us on the move will do the same. We expect to see many new kinds of applications, many of which could never have existed using regular computers. Despite all the growing pains of such a burgeoning market, it's only the beginning.
Mobile, business-minded applications are on the way. They're going to change the way we work, and in so doing, they'll fundamentally change the way we live, just as computers once did.
