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Should Facebook Join OpenSocial?

Posted by Nick O'Neill on November 2nd, 2007 10:07 AM

From the sound of things, you would expect that Facebook has suddenly lost the war to Google’s new OpenSocial standard. The OpenSocial standard is simply a way to develop a single application that will ultimately be accessible to over 100 million users across the web. While amazing in theory, as of today you cannot launch an OpenSocial application and have it distributed across all of the platforms. While Plaxo has announced that you can launch applications on their site, they are the only site you can effectively do so on currently.

We already know that MySpace, Orkut and a number of other sites are going to begin supporting the OpenSocial standard in the coming months but they have yet to complete full integration. Each of these new platforms are simply duplicating what Facebook has already successfully developed. The competitors aren’t complete yet and it will be months before they do. Aside from the clearly unfinished platforms, what does Facebook gain out of supporting OpenSocial?

Plenty. Facebook would accept a standard that is now used across the web. Additionally, developers of applications will now have access to free hosting from Google. While Facebook has a data storage API, they have yet to announce whether or not their data storage has space limitations. After checking out the OpenSocial api, I see no reason for Facebook not to join. Has Facebook lost the war with Google? It depends on what battle they were fighting.

If you think that Facebook’s primary strength is their Facebook platform and that Facebook’s goal was to bring the entire web within Facebook, then yes they may have lost the war. I would argue that the platform is not Facebook’s primary strength. Facebook’s biggest strength is their ability to most accurately map the “social graph.” Facebook knows how I am related to people but only so far as that I input accurate information. If users do not put in accurate information Facebook may ultimately become just another social platform. One thing is for sure though: Facebook has nothing to lose by supporting the OpenSocial API except for having to admin that Facebook isn’t necessarily the social standard for all the web.

Do you think Facebook should join the other OpenSocial partners in supporting Google’s new standard?

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This entry was posted on Friday, November 2nd, 2007 at 10:07 am and is filed under Analysis. 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.

Viewing 9 Comments

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    I read an interesting story on Facebook mispells. Turns out that Faebook.com is a redirect for Amazon.com and Faceboook.com is a redirect for College.com- a direct competitor. I checked out the site and it looks great. They claim to be "filling the void" that facebook opened.
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    From a business standpoint, Facebook definitely should not support OpenSocial.

    Right now they produce the leading platform. Developers will create apps for both - Facebook and OpenSocial. That's an incredible position to be in - the "other" option in a market of exactly 2.

    They should take a page out of Apple's playbook and revel in their position as the more closed option.
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    No brainer, yes they should support the api standard and continue to grow as the leader in the application of those apis and the manipulation of social data.
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    I think Facebook has made very clear that they support "openness" and interoperability to a large extent, and that they haven't been idle about people's "walled garden" image of them.

    But I also think it will be some time before we hear anything definitive from Facebook about OpenSocial. Despite what the blogosphere may lead people to think, OpenSocial is still a very unproven project. Facebook has nothing to lose by waiting and watching other networks deal with issues first rather than changing their well-built platform structure prematurely.

    Bloggers keep talking like Facebook is dead or in serious trouble - not true at all. Until OpenSocial actually lives up to its hype, Facebook still has the upper hand - and even if OS delivers on all promises, Facebook is still in a pretty good position (they could still adopt OS, and they still have their biggest asset - the social graph).
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    btw, one interesting thing I've noticed about OpenSocial from the docs - people have been advocating an "open social network" where you host your primary identity, but from what I understand, OpenSocial means Google hosts your primary identity. I think OpenSocial is more about Google creating their own social network than people might think. (Course I still think "OpenWidget" is more accurate at this point.)
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    "Despite what the blogosphere may lead people to think, OpenSocial is still a very unproven project." "Until OpenSocial actually lives up to its hype, Facebook still has the upper hand"

    1. i would say FB is still an unproven project ($15b valuation w/ $75m in revenue) 2. what upper hand does FB have?
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    I think it simply comes down to these facts.

    1. End users couldn't give a shit about how the applications make their way onto a social network they just care that they're there.

    2. People will not stop writing the apps that people want on Facebook just because OS is available elsewhere. If they do it leaves a massive market open for other developers who will fill the gap!

    3. Open Social purely allows other networks to easily build a thriving developer community.

    If Facebook feel the desire to have OS apps on their platform in the future they will have the best of both worlds by havingthe much more powerful F8 platform AND support for all apps made on the OS platform.

    I would in fact say that Facebook is the real winner in this situation.
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    @7: Certainly Facebook has much to do if they'll last for the long term, but 51+ million users, 200,000 new users per day, over half of active users returning daily, etc., can hardly be called unproven. Also, the FB platform has been out for nearly six months, with 7,000 applications currently available.

    OpenSocial, on the other hand, has been out for one day, hardly any applications are currently available, only two host sites are live (one in a moderated beta), many security/privacy questions still linger, and pretty much only a few techies have started using any OpenSocial apps, most of them probably for development and testing.

    As for an upper hand - like I always say, Facebook is all about the social graph. Most of the 51+ million members on Facebook didn't join for the applications, and aren't likely to leave because another site has some application. (Most OpenSocial apps will probably be on Facebook anyway.) OpenSocial isn't the kind of grand open social network people have been talking about.

    Furthermore, since the Facebook platform has a time advantage, there are far more apps readily available, developers are already working on newer and better ones, and Facebook has been able to refine the system extensively. OpenSocial, on the other hand, is brand new and has less to show for than Facebook did at their platform launch.

    OpenSocial might (I'm skeptical) change the Web like some have said, but it's not going to do so overnight. Anything technology with the word "social" in it relies on a community of users - a social graph. And there, Facebook is a formidable opponent.
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    Facebook has a social graph but so does every site with an 'add to friends' feature.

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