Open Social Is Nonsense
Posted by Nick O'Neill on November 9th, 2007 3:37 PMI’ve been thinking more and more about OpenSocial recently. Today, I spoke with Hooman Radfar, CEO of Clearsping after they announced their decision to support OpenSocial. I asked him why his company wasn’t going to be rendered useless by OpenSocial. Why would I say that his company’s services could be rendered useless? Ultimately, Google’s goal is obvious. Google’s OpenSocial is a standard that makes it easier in the future to host all distributed web applications on one platform. The only problem is that Google hasn’t yet announced the platform because none of the OpenSocial partners would agree to it.
As of now, OpenSocial is 3 XML schemas and a few unstable javascript libraries. Those few things could have been thrown together by a few developers in a couple weeks (including snack breaks, rolling in late to work, etc). I don’t mean to discount the value of this movement but let’s be honest, OpenSocial really isn’t that deep a concept: one standard for interpreting the social graph within any social network. Wouldn’t Google want access to the data of all of these social applications? Definitely.
The only problem is that Google can’t convince any of the social networks to accept a single distributed web application platform that is managed by Google. Instead, there are rumblings within the industry of a new platform being developed with the backing of other major players, some of which have agreed to accept the OpenSocial standard. In the end what needs to be developed is two things: the ability to transport my identity across social networks and one platform for developers to distribute their applications across all social networks with the click of a button.
While Google’s current actions may be altruistic, I would argue that the reasoning behind Google’s actions are not. For now, Google has provided social networks with a standard to use when developing their platforms. Now they need to go and build those platforms. That’s like me coming over to your house with some chocolate and asking you to make me a soufflé. There’s still a lot of work to be done and expecting Google to convince the other social networks to actually open-up is ludicrous. That’s what we were hoping for from OpenSocial but it’s exactly what OpenSocial is not.
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I think the main problem with OpenSocial is marketing. The hype prior to launch led many people (including me) to think it was something other than it actually was. It fills a gap and I'm sure it will be useful to many developers, but it falls far short of what many were expecting and doesn't seem to theorized "open social networking" at all.
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So how is OpenSocial BS based on this key point? OK its technically not too complicated but it got social sites moving quickly and thats a big plus in my opinion.
In my opninion none of this stuff is very hard technically (Facebook is easy sneezy as well really)..its the adoption of this new type of platform that is the key for me.. and Google seems to be knocking that out of the park..
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I agree that adoption/distribution is the key problem for OpenSocial to solve if they want to really attract mindshare, but I don't think they're done it yet.
See my article here about just that point: http://20bits.com/2007/11/07/memo-to-opensocial...
And Nick,
That's a good point. Google isn't doing this out of the kindness of their heart. I think it's really funny that everyone floats the line about how Facebook could step in at any second and change the rules of the game, compete with apps, etc., but here is Google setting itself up to be in the same position.
Everyone just has "Google does no evil" intoxication, I think. They have their business interests, Facebook has theirs. That's the best perspective to analyze the situation from.
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What's that FB is going somewhere - quick run interference - button hook button hook - someone go deep for the hail mary!
I love it Nick
Cheers - Eric
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I call it a big load of "whatever." Put up or shut up. If you're getting the press you need to be able to take the criticism.
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E-mail has been standardized in the 80's, before that you could only email people who are on the same network as you. The same will happen for social networks at some point and this might be a first step in that direction..
It's a good thing for everybody.. Lets hope the privacy issues are solved before everything is open and standard.
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This is an unnecessary comment. Google is a company that need to pursue its business goals. The fact that Google has wrapped its business model around openness, usability, and free stuff puts it head and shoulders above most companies in terms of overall positive impact.
You can't blame them for advancing their business, and I think you should actually applaud them for aligning their business goals with the interests of people who have no stake in the success business--the internet community at large.
OpenSocial will blow Facebook platform out of the water in a year or so. That's how I call it. Facebook got too arrogant too early. They challenged and angered the biggest businesses on the web, the developers on the platform have no loyalty to them, and users are starting to become wary of the privacy implications of features like Beacon. No one wants to be locked into a platform, and locking users in is Facebook's only weapon. You should consider changing the name of your blog to something more general.
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