It’s great to wake up in the morning to two major announcements:

- Microsoft has hooked up with Facebook, Bebo,hi5, LinkedIn and Tagged - to connect their open APIs - for Windows Live Contacts - into those systems.

- The OpenSocial Foundation has been formed - Yahoo and Google have announcements about this.

At one point I thought I should entitle this blog post “NOMINATE ME FOR THE OpenSocial FOUNDATION BOARD” - but I’ll let others make that suggestion.

But in preparation for that event - may I address my constituents with this statement:

“I’d be both honored and privileged to accept this nomination to join the OpenSocial board.”

I sure gotta wonder if this board will be made up of only BigCo players or if independents like myself will be welcome. They did put up a nice “yah wanna get involved” page - but I’m not what good that’ll do.

What I’m concerned with is making sure that

- all the APIs be two-way

- that testing and compatibility labs get set up

- that we cover more than just what OpenSocial does today

- that new ideas can always be added to the mix!

Meanwhile Microsoft’s move is a great step forward - and something that has been festering since last year - at our first DataSharingSummit when Dare Obasanjo announced that these Windows Live Contacts APIs were available.

I was shocked to see that no one really cared!

This is MICROSOFT for Christ sakes. Anyway - I guess their investment n Facebook make more sense now - huh?

When Dan Farber asked me what I thought of this Microsoft move - here’s what I wrote him:

They’re sure saying the right things

and they appear to be putting resources behind it - and putting writing what needs to be said. And exerting leadership I may add. You don’t see Google saying those sorts of thing. Apparently Yahoo made some open announcements today - too. Haven’t seen them yet.

The MS machine is gearing up to ‘crush’ the competition - only problem is that this time - the competition is Google. And we’re (the users) all pawns in this game. Who can be more open is the sort of battle we want fought!

So despite MS’s best efforts - the tactics of old will not work.

And we (the people) shouldn’t care - as long as they continue to open up - that’s a good thing.

I predicted that this would happen. Old agenda gets corrupted with the mesh.

There is only one way to go - once Pandora’s box is open = and that’s more open.

The only variables that remain are:

- how can small guys benefit from an open environment

- how do the big guys protect their family jewels while starting to monetize openness

And a good morning to you.

I’ve pinged Dare Obasanjo to make sure that these APIs are two-way. He wrote them.

But in general _ I’d say it’s a happy day for us all!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 25th, 2008 at 12:12 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.