Last November, when Google launched Open Social we asked readers if Facebook would join Google's platform. The results were split right down the middle, but as we get farther from the Open Social launch, and the two sites continue to launch competing APIs (Google FriendConnect vs. Facebook Connect, for example -- the former banned by Facebook), that seems less and less likely. This is becoming a social networking cold war according to Duncan Riley.
Even though the battle for social networking supremacy is a fight between Facebook and MySpace, the social networking arms race is really being played out between Facebook and Google. Google has demonstrated the unique ability to bring rival social networks together around its proposed open standard APIs, such as Open Social, FriendConnect, and the Social Graph API. Google has built up its own little iron curtain with MySpace, Yahoo!, LinkedIn, Ning, and the Google-owned Orkut to prop up its open source platform initiative. (Don't bother trying to follow the Cold War analogy all the way through -- it doesn't really work.)
Facebook is now planning to follow Google's lead and open source their platform. Previously, Facebook's platform technology only powered an app development platform on one site outside its own -- that of rival social networking site, bebo (recently acquired by AOL). An open sourced platform means that any social network could implement Facebook applications. More details should emerge in the next couple of days, according to TechCrunch, who broke the story.
Two questions immediately spring to mind following this news: 1. Does this help users? 2. Do platforms even matter?
The short answer here is: no. Exposing key parts of the social networking experience as open source projects seems like it should be beneficial to users, but for as much as the companies involved talk about openness, there is clearly a lot at stake here. Google and Facebook certainly want some amount of control over user data (so far, major players here have only paid lip service to data portability) and social applications. The latest round of developments in the social networking API world have seemed a lot like a series of power grabs.
As Steve O'Hear wrote yesterday on ZDNet, "One widely supported and open standard, not two, would be in the interests of the industry as a whole."
A quick look at the app galleries on Facebook, MySpace, or any other mainstream social network might lead you to say, "Who cares? All these apps are trivial junk anyway." And that might not be a false statement -- we even noted in January that Facebook users seemed to be losing interest in applications, and in November we argued that Facebook's users and user experience trump any app platform.
But Facebook's coming new profile design is clearly reminiscent of an operating system. As Facebook tries to become the mainstream everything, control over the dominant social application development platform on the web ends up mattering a lot.
Try as it might to shed its "fun" image by adding more granular privacy controls, and cleaning up its profile design, Facebook is still associated with "college socializing," the same way MySpace is still associated with high school (even though both web sites count users above college age as their fastest growing areas). One major strategic advantage that Google has gained via its Open Social iron curtain is that it has hooks in different types of social networks -- high school, college, business, international, regional, or anything in between (via Ning). That's a major selling point for social app developers choosing a platform.
Unfortunately, a platform arms race benefits no one except the eventual winner (if there is one). What would benefit users is a single, open platform standard, and a real commitment to data portability by all social networks.
Comments
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Agreed -- an open standard is what's required to let businesses leverage new applications on top of this social platform (in the broadest sense). We've been doing experiments with social networking features in the context of niche marketing campaigns. It's very exciting, but with true portability to a common standard, it would be superb.
Posted by: Scott Brinker | May 27, 2008 3:59 PM
Cold war analogy doesn't work here. It implies that the companies are building an arsenal to close their systems.
If they truly go open-sourced, the information we need flows and apps and other sites all get along.
If they do try to put up a wall (curtain?) then the world just ignores them.
No company or government is so powerful to stop people for communicating. The cold war is over.
Posted by: Warren Whitlock | May 27, 2008 4:11 PM
@Warren: That's why I say in the post: "(Don't bother trying to follow the Cold War analogy all the way through -- it doesn't really work.)"
;)
The cold war analogy is only useful insofar as it is immediately understood by most people as a way to explain how an arms race might look.
Posted by: Josh Catone
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May 27, 2008 4:20 PM
I'm not a tech person so I can honestly say, I don't care about platforms....
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Posted by: The Masked Millionaire | May 27, 2008 5:42 PM
It would be great to have one profile, one blog etc. Then to decide which entry or element is published on which social networking site.
Posted by: Andrew Wilcox | May 27, 2008 10:21 PM
This subject is essentially the subject of my post the other day:
http://factoryjoe.com/blog/2008/05/23/the-battle-for-the-future-of-the-social-web/
I'm somewhat swayed by the argument that competition is generally a good thing for the industry, but what it really means is that there will be a few temporary wins here and there, but most companies will be holding out for several years until a "victor" emerges so that they can focus their development to one spec/standard.
It's troubling to think about what MIcrosoft is doing with Mesh meanwhile; at least some people from Facebook and Google who have leverage run in the same circles and talk. Microsoft folks, with limited exception, seem to be in the corner baking their own version of the web, especially with technologies like Silverlight.
Google clearly has a big benefit in making the open web "their" platform; for Facebook, it's less clear how an open web strategy works for them, since they don't operate on the terms of the open web... think about: it was their universal design that appealed to so many people fed up with MySpace pages. But face it, the open web is essentially varied versions of MySpace pages. It's only a matter of time before the sheen of Facebook pages have to give way to the aesthetic demands of the Open Web; it'll be interesting to see if their platform can handle that. Google has, and thrives on it.
Posted by: factoryjoe.com
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May 27, 2008 11:09 PM
Thank you for that useful information factoryjoe...I think that their platform will be able to handle unless there is some porblems i don't know about otherwise..
Posted by: Sesli Sohbet | May 27, 2008 11:40 PM
good time to take a longer view ... this is a process that is going somewhere, don't need to analyze every little footstep ... it seems like news, and people doing stuff, but it is just an unfolding into a larger kind of human life, and sometimes the flow of the river is more important than each kick and stroke of people swimming in it
Posted by: gregory | May 28, 2008 1:30 AM
Fierce competition like this inspires innovation. I for one am a big fan of this little tug of war.
Posted by: Geoff Livingston | May 28, 2008 7:33 AM
nice work, thanks
Posted by: kraloyun | May 29, 2008 3:29 PM
@ Andrew #5
Spot on. I think it would be better for the users if the user credentials and social graph were held independent of the sites you authorise to use them. OpenID showed promise as it allowed a centralised idendity, although it was hard to use before ClickPass (http://www.clickpass.com) did their work to it. I am now hoping ClickPass uses Google Friend Connect and Facebook Connect to collect the social graph and allow it, with our permission, to be passed back to the socnets.
I am watching this area with interest, but agree that it is too early to pin your colours to any mast right now.
Ian Hendry
CEO, WeCanDo.BIZ
http://www.wecando.biz
Posted by: Ian Hendry | May 30, 2008 5:30 AM
Thank you for that useful information factoryjoe
Posted by: sesli sohbet | June 13, 2008 5:50 PM
Iron curtain seems like a grim term for Google's efforts to open up the social networking arena such that we can develop interoperable applications for any of the networking site.
Posted by: Matt Foster | June 18, 2008 7:46 AM