7 Comments »Last night the MySpace platform went live. This follows the launch of Bebo and Google will begin providing support to OpenSocial developers. Beginning this week Google will be hosting all-day “hackathons” at the Googleplex in Mountain View, CA. If you make it to these workshops, “Orkut Product Managers and Engineers will be on hand to review your application and add it to the initial Orkut application directory.”
They hype is big and now we are waiting to see what type of growth these applications experience. According to the official OpenSocial blog, applications will go live in the last week of February. Also, Google has announced that version 0.7 of OpenSocial will go live tonight and this is the same version that will be available across the multiple platforms. The true test of the platform wars will be the viral application growth. This was the most impressive part of the Facebook platform.
I have a feeling that we are also going to witness developer exhaustion as they spread their resources across the wide number of platforms currently available. I wonder if Red Bull will be enough to support the thousands of developers building applications for the social platforms. In less than 9 months, the social networks have opened up their platforms following Facebook’s steps and now we are at a new phase of social application development.
Some are wondering if this will be the year that social platforms completely open up and make user information portable between networks. I don’t see that happening anytime soon given the hype surrounding the platforms in general but perhaps we will witness a miracle. Additionally, it will be interesting to see if the launch of competing platforms will stunt Facebook’s rapid growth in user base. How do you foresee these new platforms impacting the F8 platform?
Understanding the Platform Wars…
Nick O’Neill mentions that, with the launch of MySpace Platform, the “platform wars” are on.
It’s something for brands to think about. We think the best way to understand the choice between platforms might be through an analogy….
The war is on, but it's important to understand which platforms reach the markets you are interested in. Take a look at the below link for example, which shows the geographic dispersion of the current social networks across the world:
http://kristinelowe.blogs.com/photos/uncategori...
Understanding the Platform Wars…
Nick O’Neill mentions that, with the launch of MySpace Platform, the “platform wars” are on.
It’s something for brands to think about. We think the best way to understand the choice between platforms might be through an analogy….
The war is on, but it’s important to understand which platforms reach the markets you are interested in. Take a look at the below link for example, which shows the geographic dispersion of the current social networks across the world:
http://kristinelowe.blogs.com/photos/uncategorized/2007/07/13/map.jpg
Great post, Nick. I particularly liked the idea of Red Bull fueling the developer community beyond the point of exhaustion. (Instead of buying the New York MLS soccer team, they should sponsor hackathons). This reminds me of the mobile phone app development challenges for motricity and other third party platforms.
The question is … How will developers make money?
One of my SEW Experts columnists met with Facebook last week and said there's lots of cool stuff going on. Glad you're covering the space.
Kevin Heisler
Executive Editor
SearchEngineWatch.com
Great post, Nick. I particularly liked the idea of Red Bull fueling the developer community beyond the point of exhaustion. (Instead of buying the New York MLS soccer team, they should sponsor hackathons). This reminds me of the mobile phone app development challenges for motricity and other third party platforms.
The question is … How will developers make money?
One of my SEW Experts columnists met with Facebook last week and said there’s lots of cool stuff going on. Glad you’re covering the space.
Kevin Heisler
Executive Editor
SearchEngineWatch.com
[...] Allfacebook: “Last night the MySpace platform went live. This follows the launch of Bebo and Google will begin providing support to OpenSocial developers.” [...]