SNAPI Will Defeat OpenSocial in 2008
Posted by Nick O'Neill on January 2nd, 2008 1:04 AMLast night I decided to take a look at the Bebo platform documentation. Not surprisingly, much of the code resembles the Facebook API. Much of this may be due to Bebo licensing Facebook’s platform. While I haven’t spoken with Bebo’s team to confirm my suspicions, whether or not Bebo has licensed Facebook’s platform is not what’s important here. What is important is that FBML and FQL may actually have transformed to become the defacto standard for social network programming.
On Facebook, FBML tags all start with the letters “FB” which represents Facebook. On Bebo, these tags start with the two letters “SN”. I would assume this stands for “Social Network.” The implications of this are pretty significant. While I previously announced that Facebook would try to compete with OpenSocial, I didn’t realize the overall implications. Ultimately OpenSocial is an extremely abstract concept that doesn’t inherit a lot of the social features of Facebook applications.
FBML and the Facebook API as well as the new SNML (Social Network Markup Language) and SNQL (Social Network Query Language) provide much more tangible features that are easy for any developer to understand. Additionally the new Social Network API as well as Facebook’s API provide immediate access to all of a social network’s features. OpenSocial doesn’t. Want to upload photos to a user’s social network album? The Social Network API takes care of that not OpenSocial. Want to publish an activity to the user’s newsfeed? The Social Network API will handle that as well. Not OpenSocial.
Ultimately, OpenSocial is a step above the classic FOAF (Friend-of-a-Friend) standard. It provides developers with a javascript API that enables querying to retrieve social data. Unfortunately most of that data isn’t specified in the OpenSocial specifications. It is up to each social network to determine how they’d like to implement OpenSocial. The Social Network Query Language takes everything to a whole new level by forcing a social network to adopt standard features including a news feed, profile wall and a user photo album.
When FBML first launched, many people dismissed it saying that there is no way that Facebook will get the world to become blue and white (Facebook’s colors if you weren’t aware). The funny thing is that I don’t think they have to anymore. Facebook may succeed at getting other social networks to adopt their platform model. It’s the best standard so far. Then again it’s the only standard that has launched so far.
Go browse through the SNML documentation, the Social Network API documentation and the SNQL documentation. You will soon realize that this is practically identical to Facebook’s platform. In 2008 most social networks will become social platforms and most of them will duplicate Facebook’s platform. LinkedIn is one of the few social networks that will significantly restrict applications that can launch on their platform.
Regardless of restrictions, the combination of SNML, SNQL and the general API are the perfect solution for any social network. I will group this combination under one term: SNAPI. This stands for “Social Network API.” After taking a look at Bebo’s platform I finally realized that Google definitely should be scared of Facebook. Facebook is going to be the primary competitior to OpenSocial but rather than using the often critized FBML, they will use SNML and SNAPI to take OpenSocial head on.
I’m going to go out on a limb and say that in 2008 SNAPI will defeat OpenSocial.
January 2nd, 2008 at 1:32 am
I think this is actually a really safe prediction. Generally speaking, the best way to become a platform is to build a dominant application first and have everyone else build on top of you. Facebook has already done that and OpenSocial has not. Developers want to build for the platforms that are most popular. If you’re not as popular as Facebook, it’s in your interest to make sure developers can reuse as much of their existing work as possible when they’re building apps for your platform.
Also, never underestimate the importance of time. FBML and any derivatives are available now and are benefiting from continued adoption and use. Until the OpenSocial framework is more widely available and adopted, we won’t know how truly competitive it is. Every day they wait to release it is a day’s worth of ground lost.
January 2nd, 2008 at 1:44 am
Nice, Nick.
I’d prefer to see a RESTian API evolve out of this. Heard any rumblings?
January 2nd, 2008 at 2:06 am
Interesting…
Going simply on the naming conventions used, I like the idea of a standard “Social Network Markup Language” rather than “Facebook Markup Language”.
You appear to be suggesting that Facebook is going to switch to this more neutral-sounding name when you write, “Facebook is going to be the primary competitior to OpenSocial but rather than using the often critized FBML, they will use SNML and SNAPI to take OpenSocial head on.”
What are you basing that prediction on?
I agree it would be nice, since the alternative is a world where application developers have to spit out one set of FB* tags for facebook and a set of SN* tags for any site that adops SNAPI. I like that name by the way; it’s snappy (sorry, couldn’t resist).
January 2nd, 2008 at 10:30 am
Nick, I think SNAP is the acronym for social network application platforms. So your term works. I think that your prediction is a safe bet. Just wondering when we’ll see more robust documentation about bebo’s stuff and what other networks might be integrating it.
so how soon before we seen SNML for dummies at amazon or fbml in 24 hours books?
January 2nd, 2008 at 2:58 pm
Nick, have you heard when 3rd party developers can port their Facebook apps to Bebo? Is it completely open now?
January 2nd, 2008 at 2:58 pm
Your logic might be right, but you should be aware that Bebo’s platform was nearly complete as a copy of Facebook F8 before OpenSocial was announced, so it’s not like Bebo chose F8 over OpenSocial, it was just already in progress.
January 2nd, 2008 at 7:38 pm
Hi Joe,
I spoke with Bebo today and they said the port will begin taking place in the coming weeks. No hard deadline yet though.
January 2nd, 2008 at 11:59 pm
I hope that Bebo can at least support fb tag prefixes in addition to sn prefixes until Facebook adds support for sn. I dread the thought of maintaining both if I want my app to run in Bebo and Facebook.
January 3rd, 2008 at 12:58 pm
Thanks for looking into it Nick. I’m planning to port all my apps as quickly as possible once I have access. I’ll look for their launch announcement on your blog
January 3rd, 2008 at 3:44 pm
The opening up of bebo’s system will be early january, ie:first 2 weeks.
Basically bebo’s sytem doesn’t support
FBJS,cookies and some fbml tags such as fb:is-it-christmas etc according to my sources.
Any fbml tags do not have to be converted to snml as you can try out by using the snml test tool:
http://www.bebo.com/AppToolMarkup.jsp
January 3rd, 2008 at 6:05 pm
[…] Bebo.com. She gave me some much needed updates in regards to yesterday morning’s post about SNAPI defeating OpenSocial. She informed me about a number of things that helped shed some light on the status of OpenSocial […]
January 3rd, 2008 at 6:12 pm
[…] of Bebo.com. She gave me some much needed updates in regards to yesterday morning’s post about SNAPI defeating OpenSocial. She informed me about a number of things that helped shed some light on the status of OpenSocial […]
January 23rd, 2008 at 10:40 am
[…] are that none of them except OpenSocial and OpenID will gain traction. I previously argued that SNAPI will defeat OpenSocial and that still may be the […]
January 24th, 2008 at 3:23 am
[…] No olvidemos que Google sacó hace poco OpenSocial. Una API para desarrollar para redes sociales. Mientras que Facebook tiene su propia API, que parece que también usa la red social Bebo […]
February 18th, 2008 at 10:30 am
SNAPI already exists over on socialnetworkingapi.com
don’t snooze nick
April 9th, 2008 at 11:55 pm
Nick, That’s a great article. Very informative, always delivering great news. I wouldn’t count Google out just yet…..