Facebook Developers Are Getting Too Cocky

Last week, Slide Inc. got a big $50 million investment round. It’s definitely the largest funding of an application/widget developer that I’ve heard about.

Max Levchin, Slide’s founder, has every right to be proud of his accomplishment. His company’s applications are among the top time-wasters on Facebook, and he’s getting ready to unleash more apps for the upcoming MySpace platform.

But, in an interview with The New York Times’ Bits blog, he makes what I consider a very disturbing statement. According to reporter Brad Stone’s blog entry, Levchin said:

“It’s impossible for social networks focused on scaling the network itself to build all the niche applications that bring people and keep people on these sites,” he said. Just as consumers bought Windows to play games, organize their taxes or create documents, application makers like Slide “add the bulk of perceived value to the consumers of these Web platforms,” Mr. Levchin said.

It’s disturbing because without access to Facebook’s code, Slide’s apps wouldn’t even exist. No doubt Facebook feels like IT offers a lot of value to its members. Not to mention the fact that Facebook lets developers keep all of the revenue they generate. More time spent on developers’ apps = less time with Facebook features = less revenue for Facebook.

It wouldn’t take much for Facebook to change the terms and start taking a cut of what the developers generate. Levchin and others ought to remember that.