Well well well - the wars have begun. Just as Facebook announces SocialAds - Google moves up their launch date and announces (kind of) OpenSocial.

Originally slated for Nov. 5th, Facebook’s attack on Google’s family jewels must (obviously) have prompted them to start to sneak details of OpenSocial - the APIs I was disclosed on in Sept. But now that Mr. Arrington and the NYTimes have disclosed it - I guess I can talk about it.

Yes?

Well whatever - who cares about embargoes when the world is quickly changing underneath our feet.

Just when you thought that Facebook had redefined what a platform was - Google comes in and cleanly and simply defines a distributed universe based upon THEIR APIs.

Now hopefully all of you know what I”m going to say next.

Lets not stop there! Lets get a whole BUNCH of these kind of APIs and then platforms like PeopleAggregator can support them ALL!

Mr. Yang - listening? Mr. Horowitz - gonna one up Google AND Facebook now? How is Yahoo gonna come off - in this new universe? And I bet my friend Dare Obasanjo is meeting with Mr. Ballmer et al right now - explaining this new world order to the original original lock-in platform - as we speak.

Its great to see Ning, Xing, Plaxo, LinkedIn and hi5 on the list - though I’m not sure who Viadeo is - and what in the world Oracle is doing there - but who cares! The more the merrier! Now we just need MySpace and Bebo and along with Orkut - we’re really starting to rock!

In case you don’t quite grok what Arrington has disclosed let me explain it like this:

- Facebook’s platform defined a way for app developers - like Slide, Flixter, iLike and RockYou to build apps on top of a new kind of ‘toolbox (using the Mac analogy.) Facebook apps had immediate access to one’s list of friends and app developers could use the Facebook ‘language’ to send out invites, send RSVPs, add apps to a menu bar and all sorts of other coolio ’social things’. This radicaly altered the landscape of developer/platform functionality. But the problem was that Facebook’s onerous TOS (terms of service) prevented app developers from doing anything OUTSIDE of Facebook’s universe and even claimed that user’s data was called ‘Facebook data’ (sic!)

- So we complained and even created a ‘Bill of Rights for Users of Social Media‘ . Not only is that social graph data owned by the USER and not Facebook, but Facebook was really just acting smart and redefining a new kind of lock-in platform. Well smart - but not smart enough.

- So now Google stands back - and remember they’re doing this from a position of strength. They have Orkut and they have a $700 share price, gobs of cash and a world class organization. So they feel confidant that they can take on Facebook and completely upset the apple cart. This of course is great for us. What Google has done is define Hosts (which are the social networks which support the APIs) and Developers are the folks who create the applications.

- Hosts support the APIs and Developers build apps. They can utilize ‘a canvas’ which is a page inside the social network or use their own dam pages. Mix and Match - do what you want. What sits in the middle are a set of open APIs to facilitate the same kind of functionality that Facebook provides, but in a truly open way.

- One could argue about other approaches to openness. Brad and David talk about a shared database of social graph data. Dick Hardt and Sxip has an attribute exchange he contributed to the OpenID2 spec. SixApart just released a Relationship Update Stream. And Google’s APIs just expand the vocabulary of openness even further! These APIs will be scrutinized, critqued, expanded upon and mimiced. And maybe they’ll be NEW kinds of APIs or techniques to come! I say COOLIO! Bring it on!

. Google’s approach dictates no Google ads, no lock-in (except to the APIs themselves) and most importantly - no onerous TOS, rules or policies that limit how app developers can use these APIs. What you have is a new kind of ethereal platform - a platform which we all can define to use in any way we see fit. That’s the nature of the web and that’s what Jeff Huber talked about at his “The Web is the Platform” speech at Web 2.0.

- So what’s next? Well we have Microsoft opening up their Microsoft Live APIs and providing access to ALL these straight, normal Windows users. We (hopefully) will have Yahoo doing the same for MyYahoo and their 150M strong daily visitors. Add in Orkut, Friendster, hi5, LinkedIn and Video and you quickly see that Facebook ain’t in no great position of strength anymore.

- But that’s OK - cause we all know that Facebook now has to react and change their onerous TOS and play along or get shunted out of the game.

- What it all leads to is a world of distributed, inter-connected social networking and blogging. Just what I’ve been dreaming of - for years!

Man oh Man - this is getting fun.

For the record - we at Broadband Mechanics will be supporting ALL THIS STUFF and making it available to OUR customers. Though right now I’m in NYC making those customers happy and actually building systems using PeopleAggregator.

So there you have it - the future has arrived and it rocks. Thank you Google (and I have to admit I never thought I’d be saying that.) Now what about Apple?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 30th, 2007 at 9:11 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.