The Google PR Machine Comes Out With Guns Blazin’
Posted by Nick O'Neill on October 31st, 2007 4:28 PMLast night Mike Arrington broke the news that Google is supposedly launching the OpenSocial tomorrow. Soon after I posted a response questioning the validity of this. Throughout the day I have been pinging people involved with Google’s new platform and everybody came back with the same response: “this is definitely news to me.” According to a number of sources Google will simply be announcing a new standard that enables developers to interact directly with the partnering social platforms.
In the coming months, Google is hoping that social platforms will announce that they use the “OpenSocial Standard,” designed and developed by Google. This standard is simply a public extension of the Orkut platform API and is similar to the iGoogle API. It sounds like Google just played a successful game of chicken in which they were able to convince a number of companies to sign something saying that they are non-exclusive “partners,” and will commit to supporting the OpenSocial standard.
In a sort of abstract way, the new standard is similar to the failed XFN standard. Given Google’s leverage in the industry, they were able to convince a number of less significant partners to join them in pursuit of Facebook. The funny thing here is that Google was unable to convince the two biggest players: Facebook and MySpace to join in the party. One unnamed source that I spoke with compared this to George Bush’s alliance in Iraq which was called the “coalition of the willing.” That alliance included the powerful armies of Nicaragua, Tonga, Hungary, Portugal and a number of other countries.
While this new platform should not be discounted as meaningless, the partnering platforms are not ready to launch yet. Hi5 and a couple other partners will be demoing the service at tomorrow’s announcement but none of the platforms are officially ready for launch. Rumor has it that the Orkut platform won’t be ready for launch until December 1st. However this pans out, one thing is certain: the Google P.R. machine may just be the most effective P.R. machine in the industry.
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The 'coalition of the willing' may have been a coalition of nobodies, but who was leading it? Regardless of the immediate support, this is a great initiative by a great company.
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I completely agree with you that this could be big given the power of Google. What I was simply questioning was whether or not this is it all going down tomorrow? It's not and this is going to be a drawn out process not an overnight event. It was portrayed by the media (primarily Google's PR group ... not just the other blogs) as being a huge launch tomorrow.
That helped them get a bunch of press by spinning the story. Great move by the Google PR team but it's a bit misleading. No?
Best,
Nick
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You seem highly critical of GOOG as the giant and none to skeptical of FB as the underdog. I can't even call FB a David at this point. All they are is potential. Unproven potential at that. THAT is the story here.
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I just wrote a post that says that OpenSocial still has a chance of succeeding. I don't want to discount them. Honestly though, the initial stories were all based on a Google press release that you can read here:
http://battellemedia.com/archives/004058.php
I'm sorry but there is nothing misleading about my title at all.
Best,
Nick
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You say that as if you work at Google but your email address is a Yahoo one. Additionally, it definitely was a real press release because it's the same one the NYTimes used to create their article.
Best,
Nick
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Collaboration on ``OpenSocial'' to Spark and Simplify Web Innovation
LOS ANGELES & MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Nov 01, 2007 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- MySpace, the world's largest social network, and Google, Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) today announced that they are joining forces to launch OpenSocial-- a set of common APIs for building social applications across the web. The partnership spearheads an initiative to standardize and simplify the development of social applications. Today's announcement underscores MySpace's commitment to supporting standards that foster innovation in an increasingly social Web.
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The launch of OpenSocial is the first release of technical details for the forthcoming MySpace Platform. Starting tonight, developers can start writing applications for OpenSocial at http://code.google.com/apis/opensocial which the MySpace Platform will support at launch.
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