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November 01, 2007

Google OpenSocial Due Today

Facebook opened its code to outside developers a few months back and from then on the Facebook applications have been coming thick and fast. Instead of just one application created by Facebook to keep track of your college courses and network with students in your classes there are now over 20 similar applications created by individuals, groups and businesses which do basically the same thing.

While Facebook is pumping out the content, other social networking tools are getting further and further behind. Where else but in Facebook can you look up a book at University of Michigan Library catalog and throw a sheep at someone from the same site? The problem is as more and more social networking interfaces come along companies have to either write multiple applications for each platform or pick and choose which one will give them the most bang for their bucks. Facebook applications can only run on Facebook. MySpace apps only work on MySpace. This may change though. Google is scheduled to release OpenSocial today, a new opensource API which will allow programmers to create applications which will run on a number of different social network sites, just not Facebook and MySpace.

There's an interesting article on this from Information Week, "Google Squares Off Against Facebook with OpenSocial". While there's no way this will make any significant dent in the traffic on MySpace and Facebook, Google seems to be trying to scoop up all the traffic related to the Facebook/MySpace wanna bes and position themselves for the next big thing. To quote the article,

So while Google may be offering a more open model than Facebook, the value of Facebook's walled garden isn't yet diminished. "They poked a hole in the dike, but it's far from opening up the floodgates," said Valdes.[Gartner analyst]

Don't count the open model out, however. "Over time, open tends to win over closed," said Kraus [Google director of product management]. "But it's still very early in terms of social networking."

Posted by swortman at 02:46 PM | Comments (0)