Facebook Opens Platform, OpenSocial in Trouble?

Barely a month after Google backed by other social networking sites announced its OpenSocial platform for interoperability between social networks, Facebook has announced that it would also be keen to license its APIs. Depending on how you look at it, this could be the best or the worst thing to happen to the social networking space.

On the negative side, OpenSocial is still embryonic while FaceBook is the dominant player in the social networking space. Google being a dominant player in the Web development arena as a whole implies that developers have a strong bet on the future interoperability standards. However, the same cannot be said about FaceBook.

On the positive side, perhaps the move was exactly what Google wanted, an opening up of the platform that commanded such a large community of social app developers. In the long run perhaps both and maybe still emerging platforms can all coexist as long as there are developers who would not mind porting applications to either side.

Bebo, the UK based social network has perhaps made the best choice of supporting both OpenSocial and the FaceBook APIs.

Other news of importance in these platforms wars would be how LinkedIN has developed its platform to let websites target data from the linkedIN profiles of users. Though the model serves the needs of linkedIN’s primary audience ( its a business networking site), it might be a view of the things to expect from social platforms in general.

More competition does mean better functionality and utility. Same is to be expected from the Social networking front as well. Microsoft alone seems to be conspicuously absent from these technology wars. In the mobile space Microsoft did make a move with the acquisition of WebFives. Perhaps their entry in the platform space too is just an acquisition away.

Arun on December 16, 2007 Subscribe to our RSS Feed

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4 Responses to “Facebook Opens Platform, OpenSocial in Trouble?”

Daniel on December 16th, 2007 12:12 pm

Personally I think that this is a good response from Facebook. They need to play the game if they are to compete with Google.
Anthony on April 7th, 2008 2:34 am

No, OpenSocial is not in trouble because of Facebook deciding to “open up” in response to this open source threat. What is likely is that the SN space will muddle through several competing standards for data sharing, making the integration worse for everyone. Bottom line: Facebook may be the current enrollment leader but it is still waay too early to say they are the dominant player in a significant long-term way. Their lead could evaporate quickly. Facebook should adopt Open Social and compete on other factors than proprietary lock-in, which remains their current strategy. I would like to see Open Social completely overtake Facebook’s proprietary architecture and render then insignificant unless they actually add value to the larger SN world.
Arun on April 7th, 2008 5:58 am

Vehement thoughts Anthony. I agree that in the long term it is hard to say which (and how many) of the social networks we see today will survive. Consumer taste is fickle and it takes only a snap for things to go from good to bad. The question on whether Facebook should embrace open social is highly open-ended. On one hand the user should have the choice to have his/her data portable across different sites. On the other hand is Facebook losing its subscriber base to some new start-up that may be embracing open social. There is an inertia to change all your contacts over from one site to another manually and that is significant when it comes to retaining users.

Playing on a level field is perhaps not a concept you can apply to technology. The initial starters have always have the advantage - be it Microsoft with their OS, Google with their search, or in this case Facebook with its social network.