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.
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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.
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I'd prefer to see a RESTian API evolve out of this. Heard any rumblings?
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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).
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so how soon before we seen SNML for dummies at amazon or fbml in 24 hours books?
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I spoke with Bebo today and they said the port will begin taking place in the coming weeks. No hard deadline yet though.
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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
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don't snooze nick ;)
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