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Should Facebook Join OpenSocial?

OpenSocial Logo

MySpace, Six Apart, Friendster, Hi5, Bebo, Hyves, Imeem, LinkedIn, Ning, Oracle, Orkut, Plaxo, Salesforce,  Tianji, Viadeo, and Xing have already confirmed that they are joining Google’s OpenSocial initiative. Question now remains whether Facebook will be forced to join OpenSocial as well.

Facebook spokesperson Brandee Barker said yesterday that “Despite reports, Facebook has still not been briefed on OpenSocial”. When asked whether Facebook would be interested in joining forces with Google, Mrs. Barker’s reply was: ““When we have had a chance to understand the technology, then Facebook will evaluate participation relative to the benefits to its 50 million users and 100,000 platform developers.”

Even though Mike Arrington was fast to write: “Google may have just come out of nowhere and checkmated Facebook in the social networking power struggle.” Erick Schonfeld adds in a later post on TechCrunch:

“Not so fast, Mike. The anti-Facebook coalition piling onto Google’s OpenSocial platform does not constitute checkmate for Google just quite yet. These are developer announcements. No actual consumers have changed their social networking habits because of OpenSocial. Facebook still has all the momentum with consumers (and, thus, with the developers who want to reach them). It can afford to wait and see how this whole OpenSocial thing plays out.”

In any case, Facebook cannot wait long before deciding its move. From my understanding, apps will be easier to develop for OpenSocial. With OpenSocial, for example, full applications can run on members’ profile pages, whereas on Facebook there are substantial restrictions on what developers can do on those profile pages. Therefore developers may end up preferring OpenSocial over Facebook.

Marc Andreesen, Founder of Ning, comments:

“By making this exact same kind of opportunity available to any other social network or container and every app developer and site on the web, in an open and compatible way — will prevent Facebook from having any kind of long-term proprietary developer lock-in. Developers will easily write to both Facebook and OpenSocial, and have every reason to do so — in fact, 100+ million reasons to do so.”

Since it is known that Facebook is preparing to take on Google with its own social ad network soon, if Facebook joins OpenSocial, and makes it simple for its developers to port their applications elsewhere and power those applications with Facebook ads, then it could really reign victorious.

It will be interesting to see what Facebook’s move will be. What do you think? Will Facebook be forced to join OpenSocial? And should it join OpenSocial?

I liked Jerome’s comment on TechCrunch: “The entire social networking world has announced that they are ganging up to take on Facebook, and Google is their Quarterback in the big game.” Let the game begin!

 

 

This entry was posted on Friday, November 2nd, 2007 at 4:14 pm and is filed under Social Networks, Web 2.0. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

  • Facebook does not need to adopt or adapt to Open Social... for now. Social networking is about just that, connecting socially. Widgets are complimentary to the overall experience, not an integral part of the experience.

    Facebook is where the people are. They aren't leaving Facebook for another Open Social compatible network for widgets alone. They will leave when their social network moves onto the next big thing. And trust me, Facebook will adopt an open developement platform long before them.

    I were Facebook I would monitor their number carefully and continue to seek dialogue with Google and other emerging platforms. This is by no mean a fundamental shift in the social network platform or social network user behavior. Everyone's got to chill out, take a breath and look at this from a broader perspective.

    Of all the "killer" moves in today's marketplace, I can't think of one that truly killed. Widgets are a nice wrapper, and cross platform capabilities may open new doors and eventually lead to a shift in social network user behavior. But for the foreseeable future, nothing's changing.
  • Mostak Sobhan
    Yes Facebook should definitely join the Open Social group, or else they will be left out. Remember ICQ? ICQ was the most popular instant messaging platform at the begining and I guess we can say that yahoo and MSN has take over ICQ in number of users long time ago and became more popular. Cooperation builds business and selfishness. Facebook has to learn that. So other!
  • If Google had built a truly open platform with technology like OpenID instead of one that simply allows developers to write more idiotic garbage "applications" like SuperPoke they may have had an opportunity to knock Facebook's socks off, and in the process make Facebook compatible. But as it stands, this is just another example of competition for its own sake rather than to benefit the consumer. Just like IE vs Mozilla, just like Mac vs Windows, just like Java vs. .NET, it forces developers and consumers to make an unnecessary choice so a corporation can benefit.
    Consumers win when open standards win, not when two corporations intentionally set up barriers to interoperation to please their investors.
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