for W3c validation

I’m guessing if you continue to read this blog, you will see that I am a huge fan of what Facebook is doing in the social networking space.  Announcing their Facebook Developers platform (Open API) confirms my suspicions– they have some very sharp business (and tech) minds on their staff. Over at Mashable, Pete Cashmore comments that, “This (open API) is great news, and will no doubt lead to hundreds of Facebook mashups and widgets.” I agree with him wholeheartedly! This is truly a brilliant move on the part of Facebook’s Peter Zuckerberg.

Tapping into the large community of developers out there when their chief rival Myspace is not is a great move that is sure to gain them some users (and cool add-ons to their site) in the long haul. It will help get their brand name out on hundreds of other sites across the web.

I’m also a huge fan of the way that Facebook has set themselves up to create a vast network composed of many smaller networks. Facebook is dominating the college market at present and has started to connect people in corporate work environments. You’ve all probably heard- a network’s largest strength is the number of users connected to that network. Many friends of mine are very loyal Facebook users and HATE myspace and Facebook’s usefulness will only increase as it grows its user base. Who knows what the business guys at Facebook are planning next.

Are social network mergers in the works? Imagine if Facebook teamed with LinkedIn & Windows Live Spaces. Similar to the way MSN Messenger works with Yahoo’s Messenger (which was a great move for both sides), Facebook could team with other social networks and become very powerful, very quickly…