Facebook gets gangbanged?
Is the enemy of my enemy, my friend?
The last week has been pretty amazing with Open Social leaking and quite coincidental with my last post. I'm still trying to figure out the implications, but watching The Other social networks ganging up together to put pressure on Facebook is fascinating.
From a developer point of view it's great but I don't understand what Google gets out of it (apart from it being ANOTHER service that they supply); what's the revenue model? How does it affect Facebook - does it even affect them at all?
With the W3C there is a (pretty much) altruistic motive behind their standards - but at $700/share I don't have that confidence with Google!
Certainly for "other" social networks joining up with Open Social is pretty much a no-brainer: they're playing catch-up with the whole developer-platform thing and it's very unlikely that any of their own propriety APIs would gain any traction. Even if they did give it a go history as shown us the inevitable angst that would have followed (see last post); so in that respect all Google has done is had the foresight and position to jump forward a couple of years and unify everyone with a common standard right from the start.
The more I think about it the more it seems that The Others aren't ganging up and circling Facebook like a pack of sharks looking to take bites out of them; instead they are banding together like a shoal of baitfish - for survival.
Not being open and allowing developers in will kill off their services: they won't have "the cool new apps" running on their networks and would have to compete with Facebook's huge mind-pool of independent developers (and not forgetting the long-tail that will inevitably form). Users would migrate AWAY from the likes of LinkedIn, to Facebook, where their data and network can be exploited and enhanced by the application developers (this is reported to be happening already).
Now they at least stand half a chance of standing up against The March of Facebook. Even if Facebook don't get on board with Open Social I bet that us developers would still write apps for them: one for Facebook, one for Open Social. But over time, would Facebook feel the pressure to fall into line?
The last week has been pretty amazing with Open Social leaking and quite coincidental with my last post. I'm still trying to figure out the implications, but watching The Other social networks ganging up together to put pressure on Facebook is fascinating.
From a developer point of view it's great but I don't understand what Google gets out of it (apart from it being ANOTHER service that they supply); what's the revenue model? How does it affect Facebook - does it even affect them at all?
With the W3C there is a (pretty much) altruistic motive behind their standards - but at $700/share I don't have that confidence with Google!
Certainly for "other" social networks joining up with Open Social is pretty much a no-brainer: they're playing catch-up with the whole developer-platform thing and it's very unlikely that any of their own propriety APIs would gain any traction. Even if they did give it a go history as shown us the inevitable angst that would have followed (see last post); so in that respect all Google has done is had the foresight and position to jump forward a couple of years and unify everyone with a common standard right from the start.
The more I think about it the more it seems that The Others aren't ganging up and circling Facebook like a pack of sharks looking to take bites out of them; instead they are banding together like a shoal of baitfish - for survival.
Not being open and allowing developers in will kill off their services: they won't have "the cool new apps" running on their networks and would have to compete with Facebook's huge mind-pool of independent developers (and not forgetting the long-tail that will inevitably form). Users would migrate AWAY from the likes of LinkedIn, to Facebook, where their data and network can be exploited and enhanced by the application developers (this is reported to be happening already).
Now they at least stand half a chance of standing up against The March of Facebook. Even if Facebook don't get on board with Open Social I bet that us developers would still write apps for them: one for Facebook, one for Open Social. But over time, would Facebook feel the pressure to fall into line?
posted by Rich at 8:36 PM
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