Parakey and Facebook - Brash Youthful Vision and Enthusiasm

Facebook Acquires Parakey. Below is information from the Parakey Website.


"What is Parakey?

Parakey is a platform for building applications that merge the best of the desktop and the Web. Like desktop applications, these applications work offline, offer more privacy than pure websites, run quickly, and integrate with your computer and its devices. But like Web applications, they are also more creative, visually alluring, accessible from anywhere and potentially accessible by anyone. In short, Parakey apps are designed to be both useful and social, a combination that is too rare today.

Parakey is building not just the platform but also its first set of applications. We enjoy programming, but ultimately we started this company to make computers better for average people who turn to technology for convenience, not...adventure. When people need to call their "computer friend" in 2007 to install a program, scan a document, burn a CD or show a picture to a friend, there is a problem. Fixing it will take time and the patience to sit down with users and understand them."

So what does this mean to the Facebook community of the future? For the member of Facebook, a parakey acquisition signals even further that Facebook sees itself as a platform, not just an application or a social network. It seems to be following the lead of Mark Benioff and Salesforce.com by allowing development to take place on a platform it owns and builds on the web - Software as a Service. (SaaS).

These strategies may be significant as thousands of applications are developed on a proprietary platform, it will be more difficult for the members to leave. The amount of development from individuals to larger companies will continue to provide new value almost on a daily basis for at least the next 12 to 18 months.

Facebook executives seem to also believe that they need to move beyond applications appealing to the "college crowd" such as sending gifts, giving Gold Stars and playing games, and allow for development of more serious applications with long term utility (stickiness) as well. This statement: "Parakey apps are designed to be both useful and social, a combination that is too rare today." is important. It recognizes that there is a gap for applications affecting productivity.

The idea that the founders of Parakey want to keep computing simple also appeals to the mass market approach of Facebook. This seems to be in the same line of thinking of Steve Jobs. Many of the members of social networks are individuals, not companies with limited resources for computer support. Future models of working predict that "virtual companies" and "project teams" will continue to populate the world and there still is not a suite of products to allow these teams to function in a virtual environment.

Parakey says on its website opening "Giving the Computer the Bird". This fearless, creative vision from a youthful team may bring changes to computing which may affect how individuals and teams work in the future.

Facebook and Scrabble is Scrabulous

One of the first game applications on Facebook is called Scrabulous, based upon the game of Scrabble. The game is very well done an allows you to play scrabble in either real time or over a period of days with your Facebook friends. The Scrabulous team has also done a wonderful job, creating a gaming site outside of Facebook which includes a variety of formats plus scrabble dictionaries.

Below is Andrew Kaplan's (FE) interview with Rajat Agarwalla (RA), one of the developers of Scrabulous.

(FE): How and why did you decide to start Scrabulous?

(RA): Scrabulous was launched in July 2006 and is now the world's number one site for free online Scrabble. Although a couple of other sites like ISC and Games.com already existed, they were not professionally managed and users were frustrated with the lack of discipline. ISC required users to download their software which raised security questions, while users were tired of the quitters at Games.com. We felt that the Scrabbling fraternity deserved a much better website that cared more about the users and the game, rather than advertisements or profits. The hundreds of contributors of Scrabulous and guestbook comments are testimony to the fact that they are getting top quality services, for free.

(FE): What challenges did you face in developing Scrabulous? What opportunities do you see for yourself or your company?

(RA) : All new start-ups face hurdles and Scrabulous was no exception. We were dogged by server crashes for many months after launching the site, not to mention bandwidth problems and nasty user complaints that overflowed our inbox. Having had no past experience in handling a gaming website, things were difficult but we slowly took the bull by its horns. Fixing bugs was a tedious process and took a lot more time than we had anticipated. But all in all, it was great fun and the site has settled down nicely. By no means however does that mean we are slowing down. We recently launched Scrabulous.org that is aimed at promoting the game in schools and colleges. We wish to actively take part in this venture so that children discover this excellent form of "edutainment" and look beyond just social networking, which of course has consumed everyone today.

(FE) Do you have any measurement tools provided by Facebook to know how many people use their application, what countries/continent, ages, etc?

(RA)To respect the privacy of users, this information was not disclosed to us. However the number of users is publicly available on Facebook itself and we had over 55,000 on July 15th, 2007.

(FE) Are you a passionate Scrabble player? How long have you personally been on Facebook?

(RA) Oh yes! Been playing the game since I was about 5 years old. Scrabble has such a timeless appeal and is great fun for the family. And kids learn a lot of new words too. Have been on Facebook for about 3 months now I guess.

(FE) How is this funded? How do you make money with Facebook Applications?

(RA) Scrabulous has been developed by RJ Softwares - www.rjs.in . We currently do not require any payments since we are able to fund this ourselves. Voluntary financial contribution is of course welcome as there are hosting and other costs to be met.

Facebook is still growing and we have yet to see what options they give developers to monetize applications.

FE: Thank you, Rajat, for taking time to speak with Facebook Enthusiast and sharing your insights.


Below is the disclaimer from the Scrabulous web site:
Disclaimer: Scrabble is a registered trademark of J. W. Spear & Son PLC and Hasbro© Inc. Any and all uses of the word "Scrabble" on these pages refers to this trademark. This web page in no way is an attempt to confuse the visitor that it is the web page of Mattel© or Hasbro© brand Scrabble, although we play and love that game. Please do not read any further if you are looking for the official Mattel© or Hasbro© site because this is not it. We therefore request that you please read the disclaimer very carefully.