South By Southwest: Start-Ups Attempting to Resist Reliance on Facebook
By Karla Robinson
March 15, 2012
March 15, 2012
- In the past, companies like Zynga had great success building their offerings around the Facebook platform, using the social network’s user base and personal data.
- However, this may change in the near future. Start-ups at the South By Southwest conference this week say they are trying to reduce their reliance on Facebook, fearing that the company “may eventually demand steep tolls for using the social network to reach end users with software and services,” according to the Wall Street Journal.
- Many services use Facebook accounts to sign in on their apps and some popular start-ups that incorporate Facebook don’t pay the company anything for the extra traffic or data.
- For Facebook, this could spell trouble for the upcoming IPO if it can’t monetize these offerings to other services — like it did with Zynga, which pays Facebook 30 percent of sales on the site.
- For start-ups, the “profit-oriented” Facebook could eventually place large charges on access to user data, driving the desire to reduce reliance and build out their own platform and independent services.
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