OpenSocial will force Facebook to open up

November 1st, 2007 • Related • Filed Under

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After catching the MySpace/OpenSocial news my immediate question was how quickly is Facebook now going to open up? Do they have a choice? not a chance. The list as it stands - MySpace, Bebo, Salesforce, LinkedIn, Ning, Hi5, Plaxo, Friendster, Viadeo and Oracle, already named as the anti-facebook coalition will mean that they have to open up, until then they are ‘dead man walking’. Google know the power of openness and have just impaled Facebook with it.

Valuation

The second interesting question is after Microsoft invested in Facebook are they now regretting it? $15 billion valuations are now starting to look decidedly iffy. The fact is Google knows everything about monetizing internet traffic and the power of OpenSocial is going to just further leverage every aspect of Google’s armory of money making.

Set against this we have Facebook who have not proved they can make the revenue (£150m revenue VS $15 billion valuation just doesnt work). It is a well known fact that behavior of your average Facebook user means they very rarely click on adverts. I have been wondering why Facebook has not released their own advertising platform yet, I am sure part of the reason is that as soon as it appears and does not meet up to the sky high expectations would mean gaining that extra $500 million would suddenly become much harder.

What now

These announcements are not going to suddenly mean people migrate from Facebook but as people get used to the idea that all their data can be moved from platform to platform, they will be asking the question, ‘Why wont Facebook let me?’

UPDATE:
Robert Scoble asked my question at the press conference ‘When is the API going to be available’ - answer, tonight! I will start working on it as soon as it appears!

UPDATE 2
From Scoble’s Twitter stream: ‘will Facebook come onboard? Eric Schmidt says that’s a question for Facebook to answer’

UPDATE 3
It turns out that Google reached out to Facebook but they turned them down.

There Are 4 Responses So Far. »

  1. Comment by lofi on 1 November 2007:

    > my immediate question was how quickly is Facebook now going to open up? Do they have a choice? not a chance.

    um, why not?

    > will mean that they have to open up

    um, why?

    this is the most bizarrely uninformative blog entry I have ever read - EVAR!!1

  2. Comment by Nick Halstead on 1 November 2007:

    Bet you a dollar it happens in the next 2 months, open or die. Every other top blog is saying it.

  3. Comment by Jonathan Street on 1 November 2007:

    Bet you a dollar it happens in the next 2 months, open or die. Every other top blog is saying it.

    Hence it must be true! ;)

    The fact that people are calling it the anti-facebook coalition to start with suggests to me that this issue is going to be far from a walk over.

    The list of participating sites is interesting but with the exception of MySpace they are all small fry. The interesting ones for me are Salesforce and Oracle. Those two I have no idea as to why they appear on the list.

    There are a lot of interesting questions surrounding this. Here is my $0.02 on two of them:

    If facebook doesn’t join the OpenSocial initiative will developers switch? No. Beyond those that would have switched to the MySpace API to target their demographic that is. At worst/best developers will try and develop for both platforms and development will slow.

    Worse case scenario - new apps for facebook dry up, will users switch to other sites? No. Maybe it is just me but the prospect of being able to throw sheep at people just doesn’t thrill me. Wool is itchy.

    It should be noted that to date I’ve added the Video application and considered the ‘where have you been’ apps. I’ve been totally unimpressed by every other application so I may just not get it.

  4. Comment by Jonathan Street on 1 November 2007:

    Forgot to mention. I like you comments form.

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