My love for Facebook gets tested each day. It’s now starting to become a love-hate relationship, and primarily because of the open API (Application Protocol Interface) which can turn these kind of networks into the neighbourhood skip.

In the beginning I liked the concise way in which facebook gave me a snapshot of what was happening in the world of my family and friends with things like friend’s status updates, wall posts, and friends being added to friends, etc. Then came the flurry of add-ons and soon everybody was asking me to add this and suddenly my nice news feed become a list of rubbish. I think Facebook needs to evolve the way in which the user can control their layout.

While I still believe social networking applications benefit from open APIs, they must ensure they give the user more power in controlling layout and interface. The technology exists and Facebook proved that the way they took a big step in the right direction of evolving social networking applications. Unlike Pownce which is just a regurgitated version of Twitter, Facebook offered a lot more than what we have seen in the past.