A lot of hype surrounds OpenSocial, but a few things may keep it from taking off the way Facebook applications have.
#1 - Can it be monetized?
If developers can’t make money off the applications, then what is the point of developing on the platform?
#2 - Is it truly open?
Can you communicate across social networks? Can I get my friends list on Plaxo, Orkut and Myspace — or is it limited to the container?
#3 - Will it really be a standard — or a mess in six months?
Founder of Ning.com has said that containers will be able to develop API’s specific to their container. What happens in six months when Myspace has a ‘bulletin’ API, Ning has a friend finder API, and Orkut has a photo gallery API — all completely different and none that work across networks?
5 responses so far ↓
1 whatleydude // Nov 2, 2007 at 2:09 pm
Dude,
I see open social as ‘the plumbing’ for the other social networks. Google have been.. er.. wise.. in their decision to not try and create a new social network but to provide the pipes that will link the current ones together.
And… if Google look after the pipes then they *know* what’s passing through them.. then - to put it crudely - they can ad adwords to them…
And therein lies the nub.
PS - Nice blog btw dude.
2 David Cochran // Nov 3, 2007 at 1:31 pm
Your thoughts make sense to me. Seems like it’ll be an interesting-to-watch uphill battle for Google.
I just wonder about possibly useful developments like portable profiles across multiple sites, customizable user interfaces giving you feeds from multiple networks (LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.) — and stuff like that.
Already just the fact that I’d like to select a small set of my Facebook feeds (filtering out others), have them combine with feeds from LinkedIn and a few of my favorite blogs, AND enable me to respond to them all from the same user interface … seems to suggest a real and legit opportunity here. If opensocial can start making that kind of thing possible, then it may happen.
I’m thinking about the mention that Google intends to build off the abilities of Google Reader … which already brings together multiple feeds in one place — and just needs the ability to respond back — which doesn’t seem that hard to pull off.
Of course if that’s all it takes — an RSS reader with ability to respond and send feeds in return — then something like Netvibes could also be leveraged to do the same thing, as could an RSS client on your own machine.
If so, it’d be hard for Google to control, but they may have a hand in developing this capability — and benefit from it in the process.
3 Ellen Leanse // Nov 3, 2007 at 4:00 pm
Like your style, Ry.
4 Gil Megidish // Nov 5, 2007 at 12:04 pm
Definitely the same questions I had. It seems that OpenSocial, at its current version, seems to me like a quick hack. It’s looks as if they released it just to stop the craziness that’s been going on with facebook’s api. As I see it, in 6 months it will just be a mess of container-specific apis, and then a year later a second revision, OpenSocial V2 that will fix these. You can’t tell MySpace not to extend their container after it’s out. It doesn’t seem rational that a big partner as MySpace will wait out for a small partner.
OpenSocial means opening up a social networking website to developers, rather than socializing up social networking websites.
Great post, man.
5 Hans Erik // Nov 8, 2007 at 3:10 pm
As someone who is trying to get a bead on this OpenSocial debate I appreciate your ideas and your directness! Thanks!
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