Long, looonnngggg ago, in May 2007, well before you were born,
Facebook opened up its platform to third-party application developers and instantly achieved a reputation as the omnipotent God of all things social networking.
The end.
Well, not exactly the end. Because with the launch of OpenSocial, "the end" just became "game on."
OpenSocial, a collaboration of 12 companies spearheaded by the biggest spearhead of them all, Google (Nasdaq: GOOG), is a new open Web application programming interface (API) that can be supported by both social networks and applications. Simply put, this is the same type of system that drove Facebook to stardom, except OpenSocial applications can run on any social network; whereas Facebook applications are written in Facebook Markup Language (FBML) and Facebook Query Language (FQL) and wither away and die when you try to run them outside the Facebook ecosystem. With OpenSocial, popular applications like iLike and RockYou, which were bedridden at Facebook, can frolic freely among the multitude of social networks that exist outside of the Facebook party of one.
This is a revolutionary move that takes the chains off the successful apps that were previously limited to Facebook turf. It will expose app developers to niche crowds and non-Facebookies alike as well as allow for revenue from widespread advertising on various platforms.
So, the big fat pink elephant-shaped question in the room is: Will Facebook lose its grip on one of the two aspects of its site that drove its fame? (The other being all those photos of college kids vomiting lite beer.)
Probably not. Nobunny likes change. Especially not bunnies with 300+ Facebook friends, 8 gazillion tagged photos, and a busload of third-party applications all set up to their liking and synced with their friends. Think of all the time we've invested adding friends, tagging friends, building walls. Not to be overly sanguine, but the move from Facebook to one of the OpenSocial apps would be reminiscent of the move from the college dorm to the world of work. (Where's a violin when you need one?)
Furthermore, Facebook did not build its third-party platform and rest its feet. There is more fun to be had, especially with the impending debut of Facebook Music, the not-yet-released online music service destined to compete with iTunes and MySpace . (By the way, where is MySpace in all of this? Oh, right, excuse me -- nobody cares.)
Overall, OpenSocial will probably benefit the app developers who seek broader territory, as well as app developers who've not yet set up their apps on Facebook. But it probably won't lead to a great shift of tides or the demise of Facebook as we know it. Nor will it be Orkut's saving grace, at least not initially. As The New York Times brilliantly pointed out yesterday: "A person briefed on the plans said the sites in the alliance had a combined 100 million users, more than double the size of Facebook." Well, thanks to Sherlock for the fascinating statistic, but when the teams are 12 versus 1 what exactly are we comparing?
I don't think it will revive myspace. Once the Internet proletariat (Interprolariat, to you) starts viewing things once considered hot as uncool that's usual curtains for them.
The New York Times today reported that MySpace has joined the OpenSocial alliance. While MySpace's traffic has become stagnant and Facebook's has been steadily on the rise, MySpace is still in the lead with the most users. Will Facebook get a chance to catch up or will MySpace's traffic surge again once it starts adding OpenSocial apps?
Right well this will be great for the developers, like I said, but I don't think there will be this colossal shift. Not for a while, at least. Especially if Facebook continues to one up everyone, which it hopes to do with its music service. We shall see. Also, yeah 2 users to 1, but that's really irrelevant. There are over 7000 applications on Facebook. Those developers who've already created Facebook code will stay on Facebook and potentially increase their users by creating OpenSocial code and stretching across several platforms. I'm not saying this shift will never happen, but it's not going to happen instantly. But the whole point is, whether there's a big shift or not, the developers are going to be on the winning end.
Being first to market with something doesn't necessarily mean you'll be there to see the last to market. Sure facebook is flying high now, but the young people that frequent it can be a fickle bunch. I remember when Xanga was the ultimate destination for social networking. People built up huge pages with journals, pictures, and thousands of friends, yet in the end they all flocked over to myspace and facebok when that became the next cool thing. Whose to say they won't do it again? I'm sure the application developers are interested. After all, they're not writing up all these silly facebook apps because they think facebook is cool. They're doing it because they're hoping to eventually make money off of it. And even though the OpenSocial vs. Facebook battle would be 12 against 1 as you pointed out, its still 2 to 1 in users which is all the application developers will care about.
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