Today, Facebook seems like the juggernaut crushing everything in its path, most recently Twitter’s Vine app and Yandex’s social app. And in its last quarter, Facebook’s mobile usage surpassed its web usage — for the first time ever. This is important because Facebook has now begun competing not just at the social network level, but also at the operating system level. And the company turns nine today so it will have even more mobile influence by its 10th anniversary: Just look at the rapid expansion of its App Center and SDK developer tools for iOS.unblock facebook This means we won’t just have competing platforms, but platforms built on top of other platforms. And that, as you’ll see, changes the game altogether. The Platform Games On multi-sided platforms like Facebook — and Amazon, Apple, Google, Twitter, etc. — value is created through the interactions between affiliated users, developers, and advertisers. Facebook and these other companies want to control API access and critical user information because it’s that data which unlocks monetization opportunities. Hence the recent API roadkill among all the platform companies: Besides Vine and Yandex, witness Instagram/Facebook blocking features on Twitter (and vice versa); Twitter itself blocking a number of companies; and even Google’s and Apple’s skirmishes over maps.facebook proxy Yet underneath this competition and desire for API control, there has always been a lot of cooperation. All of the players are dependent — no, interdependent — on each other. A better and more usable Facebook iPhone app, for example, surely increases iPhone sales for Apple; Apple would see no advantage in blocking that.facebook proxy But the game changes as Facebook becomes really popular on mobile. At that point, Facebook’s multi-sided platform for developers and users ends up on top of another multi-sided platform: the underlying iOS and Android mobile phone operating systems. This isn’t just an interesting market configuration — it has tangible implications as Facebook’s platform starts substituting value away from Apple and Google. Who will control the data generated by the apps then? It’s about to get ugly, and we don’t know What Would Facebook Do (WWFD). And we have to think about it, because Facebook is arguably the most ambitious platform of them all — the fabric of the web is changed because of it. Users and developers depend on it; there aren’t any viable alternatives looming on the horizon, let alone a clear Facebook killer. How many businesses rely on Facebook access to thrive? How many sites require Facebook Connect for user logins? You can’t even login to some sites if you don’t have a Facebook account. Predicting what will happen in these “platform Hunger Games” isn’t just an academic exercise. Understanding WWFD has important implications for everything from privacy and security and user choice to where the internet economy is going.