The plot thickens

Leadership or control? You decide & is it important?

clipped from www.readwriteweb.com Written by Marshall Kirkpatrick / November 2, 2007 / 30 comments 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. Written by Marshall Kirkpatrick / November 2, 2007 / 30 comments OpenSocial: Three Big Concerns 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. Here's my list of concerns, what's on yours? Is Google Exercising Leadership or Control? When rumors about OpenSocial started to take shape it appeared that it would be all based on Google - that communication between social networks

This starts to sound like a software giant scuffle

Further to the post introducing OpenSocial the following is a decent review and assessment of the relative value of each Social Network.

clipped from dondodge.typepad.com Don Dodge on The Next Big Thing 50M Facebook users don't care about OpenSocial APIsEmail This There are 50 Million Facebook users who don't know what OpenSocial APIs are...and don't care. There are about 5,000 tech bloggers and developers who think it is a revolution that will "Checkmate" Facebook and leave them with no moves. TechMeme has over 100 stories saying that OpenSocial is awesome and Facebook is dead. MySpace joins Google on OpenSocial initiative. OK, surely that settles it, Facebook is dead toast. Nope, not in my opinion. Are Facebook users going to cancel their account? No, I doubt it. Facebook was a runaway success long before they allowed 3rd party apps and widgets. I don't see Facbook users leaving because some widget might not be available, and I don't see widget developers abandoning Facebook just because there is a new OpenSocial API. Facebook is about the user community Facebook has always been focused on the user community and providing a great user experience.

Food for thought

Since most people (even the cash rich Google) feel the price tag on Facebook is way out of reality the flood of competition has started. Face it Facebook's interface is easily bettered and the cost of developing a 'new' king of the hill would be dramatically cheaper than buying a platform that is slowly drowning in application hell. When the Gods at Google [would that make them a Godgle] come up with a new platform its worth noting if only for the concept & how its going to effect everyone else.

clipped from code.google.com The web is better when it's social The web is more interesting when you can build apps that easily interact with your friends and colleagues. But with the trend towards more social applications also comes a growing list of site-specific APIs that developers must learn. OpenSocial provides a common set of APIs for social applications across multiple websites. With standard JavaScript and HTML, developers can create apps that access a social network's friends and update feeds. Many sites, one API Common APIs mean you have less to learn to build for multiple websites. OpenSocial is currently being developed by Google in conjunction with members of the web community. The ultimate goal is for any social website to be able to implement the APIs and host 3rd party social applications. There are many websites implementing OpenSocial, including Engage.com, Friendster, hi5, Hyves, imeem, LinkedIn, MySpace, Ning, Oracle, orkut, Plaxo, Salesforce.com, Six Apart, Tianji, Viadeo, and XING.

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