Last week was all about OpenSocial, Google's project that will tie together Google, MySpace and many other social networks in a common developer environment. The goal: one common set of code to create widgets from. This strikes at the very heart of Facebook's platform, which is not open and forces developers to use proprietary languages to create their widgets.
So, the big question this week will be: will Facebook bow to Google and join its OpenSocial club? The reality is that, for now, developers will create widgets for both Facebook and OpenSocial. Both have very large user bases. But long-term, Facebook risks its user base slowly leaking away and (re)turning to MySpace - or perhaps even niche social networks in the OpenSocial alliance - as more and more cool widgets get released on those other platforms.
Today I've read a couple of compelling posts arguing against OpenSocial (see Jack Schofield's post in the Guardian) and for Facebook (see Mark Cuban's post). And as our own Marshall Kirkpatrick and Josh Catone wrote, OpenSocial isn't that open and so perhaps Facebook doesn't have that much to be scared of.
What do you think: will Facebook join OpenSocial? Or will they snub Google and do their own thing? We're keen to know your opinion! Have your say in the poll below, and in the comments.
Our network blog AltSearchEngines reports that Google has around 90% search engine market share in France (well, 89.98% to be exact!). The next biggest is Yahoo ! (3.17%), followed by MSN (2.33%). Over the past year, between August 2006 and August 2007, Google has gone up by 3.76%. Whereas its 4 main competitors have all lost ground in the same time span, as indicated by this graph:
If you think about how Microsoft peaked at nearly 90% market share with IE6 in the early 2000s - and it still has over 75% even now - one wonders if Google Search will ever gain that kind of dominance worldwide? Already Google has shown it has a lot of sway over social networks, having enticed all the main players but Facebook to sign up to its set of API standards called OpenSocial. So Google is setting standards now in search and social networking, the two most popular activities on the Web.
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Google's OpenSocial has caused quite a stir over the past week. With support from MySpace, Hi5, Ning, LinkedIn, SalesForce, Friendster and a number of other large social networks, many have wondered if OpenSocial might deal a large blow to Facebook, or if it might be something Facebook will be forced to join to keep up (something that they appear to be open to). But Facebook doesn't need to worry.
The killer app for any social network is its users, not its developer API. No one joins a social network so they can rate movies, or turn their friends into zombies, or declare allegiance to their favorite sports club. The reason most people join social networks is because their friends are already there, all that other stuff just enhances their experience once they're in. Users are what make social networks go.
Things like open APIs and data portability and cross network compatibility excite pundits and developers, but most users care for only two things: a good experience (apps can certainly help here) and to be where their friends are. OpenSocial is a huge win for developers, who can now create applications or widgets for just two platforms (OpenSocial and Facebook) and have them deployed to most of the largest social networks. That means a lot less work to reach a maximum amount of people. But it's silly to think that app developers are going to shun Facebook's 50 million users if they don't join OpenSocial. It's equally silly to think that any significant portion of those 50 million users are suddenly going to defect from Facebook because popular social apps will likely be available on other networks.
Here is a summary of the week's Web Tech action on Read/WriteWeb. For those of you reading this via our website, note that you can subscribe to the Weekly Wrapups, either via the special RSS feed or by email.
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This week was dominated by Google OpenSocial, a project that will tie together Google, MySpace and numerous other social networking platforms in a common environment that application publishers can publish widgets to with one set of code. The project wasn't officially launched till Friday morning US, but throughout the week there was a lot of discussion about the impending release. When news first surfaced of OpenSocial at the beginning of the week, it was said to be 3 fairly generic API calls; and initial partners were 'second tier' social networks such as Orkut, Salesforce, LinkedIn, Ning, Hi5, Plaxo, Friendster, Viadeo and Oracle. So at that point OpenSocial was viewed as a threat to the big social networks, MySpace and Facebook in particular.
However Google's real coup was announced on Thursday US, when it was revealed that the world's top social network MySpace had joined OpenSocial as a partner. Chris DeWolfe, CEO and co-founder of MySpace, said that "this is about helping the start-up spend more time building a great product rather than rebuilding it for every social network." This announcement put the pressure squarely on Facebook, whose platform has been criticized in the past for not being open enough.
Our own Marshall Kirkpatrick took a more critical look at OpenSocial in a post entitled OpenSocial: Three Big Concerns. Marshall asked:
These are important questions - check out the post and comments thread (see also digg) for a fascinating discussion.
Facebook's Response?
At this stage it's not known if Facebook will join OpenSocial. However, the young company isn't standing still. Next week Facebook will launch its "Social Ads" advertising service. This will take Facebook ads outside the social network and enable third party sites to run them. Essentially this is Facebook's answer to Google's Adsense, so it will be watched carefully in the industry!
Also next week we'll hear more details on Facebook's "Project Beacon", an internal project that will allow Facebook to gather buying information about its users on third party ecommerce sites, in exchange for free advertising in the news feed from those third parties.
Hulu Peeks at the Public with a Whimper
Hulu, the online video project from Newscorp and NBC/Universal - with participation by Sony, MGM and others - began its highly controlled opening to the public this week. The Hollywood-content-only, wildly over funded project opened up a private beta to a few thousand users. However it is US-only and seems to just be filled with old episodes of TV. As Marshall Kirkpatrick grumbled, you won't likely be able to interact with the Hulu site for months and much of the content is available on other sites, in their video players, now.
Marshall's conclusion: there's nothing courageous or innovative about Hulu - the whole project is quite the opposite in fact. Huge media is exposing its crown jewels to the web because it has to - much as they wish it wasn't, this internet thing is real. The initial offering that Hulu is bringing to market is shamefully uninspiring and woefully inadequate for a new world of media.
TechCrunch has uncovered part of what Facebook will be announcing next week at ad:tech in New York. "Project Beacon" is an internal project that will allow Facebook to gather buying information about its users on third party ecommerce sites, in exchange for free advertising in the news feed from those third parties.
The way it works, according to a leaked document obtained by TechCrunch, is that participating partner sites would give buyers the option of sending purchase information to their Facebook news feed (i.e., "Username bought a product at Partner Site"). Third party sites don't receive any monetary compensation for participation in Beacon, but in return they get free advertising in the Facebook news feed. On their end, Facebook gets highly valuable user data, which they can use to better target ads, and they get increased brand awareness (on those retailer web sites).
The University of Oregon (my alma mater, coincidentally) is believed to be the first US educational institution to refuse an RIAA demand to hand over the names of students alleged to have illegally downloaded music. Detailed reporting and lengthy discussion can be found at SlashDot - one alumni tech blogger's perspective below.
The Oregon Attorney General, working with the University, has filed a motion in court to quash the legal move by the Recording Industry Association of America, which the University says is trying to force the educational institution to perform a legal investigation for the benefit of a private corporation. The agrieved parties ought to perform their own investigation, the University argues.
A number of the names requested are of students living in University of Oregon dorms, making it impossible to determine which of the students living there downloaded the music, representatives of the school said. The U of O is infamous for its inhumanely cramped dorm rooms, though, making it improbable that one resident could have committed such an act without the other being intimately aware.
According to the elderly gentleman in line at the coffee shop this morning who first told me about the news (we were discussing In Rainbows, which was playing on the stereo there) - the music industry needs to get with the times and stop taking their giant profits from the old business model for granted.
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DailyMe lets users choose and prioritize the news topics they are interested in tracking from a large list of prepackaged topical sources. Users can further drill down the topic modules by entering keywords - for example, only receiving Internet news related to "Facebook." Users can also subscribe to specific sources, which can be refined by topic or keyword.
Back in June of 1999, while the dot com IPOs were coming fast and furious, I participated in a fantasy stock market game on Yahoo! Being 16 and having no real knowledge of the stock market, I sunk all my virtual money into Broadcom and the Mail.com IPO. Much to my surprise and delight, by the end of the month I was ranked in the top 100. Now that I know a little bit more about the market (not much more, mind you), and now that tech companies -- the only kind I know anything about -- are doing well again, I've often thought it would be fun to try my hand at a virtual stock market game, but unfortunately, Yahoo! long ago discontinued theirs.
Happily, in our email tips box this week came word of two new startups, The UpDown and Big Smarty, have launched fantasy stock trading games that let users compete for real cash prizes. Both take very different approaches and have vastly different aims.
The Google-lead initiative called OpenSocial is all the buzz this week with anyone interested in online innovation, but beyond all the enthusiasm there are a number of questions that ought to be asked more visibly than they have been so far.
OpenSocial is a hugely ambitious project that would tie together Google, MySpace and numerous other social networking platforms in a common environment that application publishers could publish widgets to with one set of code.
There are some issues that need to be discussed about OpenSocial, however. It's not all a bed of roses, believe it or not.
