An Overview of Social Platforms and the OpenSocial Initiative

February 19, 2008 · Filed Under Technology · Comment 

It seems that everyone today webpage that ends up being their own persona to the world.  Be it a superstar athlete, a musician, an actress, or just some guy down the block, everyone seems to be connected and blogging on-line.  

And anyone who is anyone has a Myspace or Facebook page these days to connect with their fans, their friends, or even nobody in particular. (60 Million active facebook users vs. 110 Million for myspace)   

For the purposes of this article we’ll keep it simple and leave the discussion with the two giants in the industry. 

Facebook made waves last year by opening their API to allow for user created Social Networkfacebook apps.  This created a surge in popularity for Facebook, as well as a mini virtual market for small casual applications that run the gamut from trivia games to trivial time-wasters. 

Myspace is rumored to announce their own custom application system in the very near future.

These changes have transitioned both myspace an facebook into more of a platform then just websites.  The user base already existed in large (large) numbers, but now the content is much more engaging, customizable and dynamic.  The social platform tempts advertisers as the holy grail of marketing, and users were hooked before they even knew it. 

Of course Google couldn’t stand on the sidelines very long.  Google’s OpenSocial is just the latest attempt to join in the fray of the white-hot social platform development trend. Launched in November 2007, Google released a collection of API’s built to work together and to standard the core and method which websites and services work and speak together. 

You can think of Open Social as a similar initiative for social platforms as Open ID is for User IDS. While Facebook and MySpace got an initial headstart in launching the Social Networking revolution, Google has actually made large strides into the medium in just a few short months.   

Since the launch, OpenSocial has gathered support from the likes of LinkedIn, hi5, XING, Friendster, Plaxo and Ning, among others to create a huge conglomerate of social networking sites and applications that are all now linking together to form one community that uses one standard for all the software applications used across it.   

Facebook, with a reported 60 million users, doesn’t seem to be that worried yet since they believe their users are satisfied with the service and the applications and netware that run over it.   Sooner or later, however, as OpenSocial and the network it is creating across the internet continues to build and gain size, the two will almost inevitably be forced to join together or clash over user bases that will be huge. 

Google has already extended an olive branch according to some reports, and Microsoft, which owns Facebook, rebuffed their offer at a partnership.   

As the recent Open ID initiative demonstrated last year, there is strong movement in the internet community to bring barriers down and let users bring a distinct digital identity with them wherever they go electronically.  It remains to be seen if while users are beginning to enjoy seamlessly moving about the internet with one sole digital identity, if they will have any enthusiasm for a protracted trade war between two conglomerates determined to rule the internet social networking community. 

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