I threw my hat in the ring to lead a panel at SXSW 2008. Go vote for me (login required, but I promise it’s painless).

After hosting the second iteration of the Facebook Developers Hackathon with Amit Gupta at USV, I’ve found myself having the same conversation a lot: “In light of the Facebook platform, is ‘Closed’ the New ‘Open’?” Using Facebook as a case study, this question has been bouncing around USV all summer. People seem to be finding comfort in the conveniences and inherent limitations of the Facebook platform. Furthermore, people seem to appreciate Facebook as a benevolent dictator. I suppose compared to MySpace’s reign, third-party app developers have a lot to appreciate in Facebook’s freedom by comparison. Yet, prior to Facebook, it seemed like there was no question that open platforms were better than closed ones for all parties involved.

I think Scott Heifernan kicked off this meme when he said that the Facebook platform reminded him of AOL. Kottke was more direct: he followed suit by saying Facebook is AOL 2.0. Both of these posts were words of warning and played to the general wisdom that an open platform (such as the internet) is generally better than a closed platform (such as AOL).

But, Seth Goldstein, co-founder of AttentionTrust and general openness advocate, took a sharp U-Turn when the Facebook platform was released and wrote that closed is the new open. As Seth mentions in his post, Seth and Fred discussed this subject at USV and Fred nearly threw Seth out of the office ;). This is a controversial subject for Union Square Ventures seeing as how much of our decisions and portfolio companies are built on the tenet that open systems are generally better than closed ones. Seth has since bet the farm on the Facebook platform in his latest startup: SocialMedia.

Similarly, the VC community has become remarkably enthusiastic about the Facebook platform. Bay Partners launched AppFactory, a Facebook-only venture fund. Lightspeed Venture Partners’ portfolio companies RockYou and Flixter combined have developed 3 of the top 15 Facebook apps. RockYou seems to have redirected almost all development effort in focusing on the Facebook app market.

Other thoughts that inform this meme worth mentioning:
- Dave Winer’s latest thoughts on The State of The Platform.
- A great quote from Jason Calacanis: “It makes no sense to me to build inside of someone else’s platform when you have the wide open internet out there to develop on.”
- Fred’s take on how open Facebook really is.
- It’s not five f*&%-ing weeks anymore, but Marc Andreessen’s thoughts on this subject have been spot on since day one. From Marc’s post:

The web, after all, vanquished proprietary online services like America Online, Prodigy, and Compuserve — the so-called “walled gardens” — in large part because the web is a platform and the walled gardens were not. No single closed service, no matter how good, and no matter how big, could compete with the diversity of thousands and then millions of web sites that were customized to every conceivable user interest and need.

Yet most major web busineses have not themselves sought to become platforms.

So, in the context of this meme, I proposed the following SXSW ‘08 panel: Facebook: Is ‘Closed’ the New ‘Open’?

The idea would be to use Facebook as a case study for a larger conversation about the advantages and disadvantages of open and closed platforms. I don’t expect the panel to generate “the answer.” But, I think the topic would make a good community conversation because it affects everyone the elects to develop is some corner of the internet, whether it be open or closed.

So, if this sounds interesting to you, then please go vote for this panel now. Thanks!