Social Network Portability Has Arrived

Google has launched it’s Open API for Social Networks. It’s about time someone did this.

This explains why the goog wanted so badly a piece of facebook. And why Microsoft would pay at any wacky valuation for FB to keep it out of teh google. Facebook is the singular major social network not participating in google’s new scheme.

At the same time though, it cuts out at the knees the fundamental (would be) game-changing advantage of the facebook platform: the idea that someone should be able to build a social app or someone should be able to use a social app without the redundancy of setting up a new profile page, another buddy list, another messaging and comment system etc. (not to mention the viral adoption and network effect advantages that have made some facebook apps the most rapidly adopted software apps ever).

Meanwhile at long last, Google combats microsoft with it’s own operating system… a social operating system for the new web.

neat.

see also recently: Albert Lai’s great deck on Web 2.5, 3.0 and social operating systems
Jevon’s insightful post on Startup North: Delusions of Facebook – Should you be a Facebook Startup?

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4 Responses to Social Network Portability Has Arrived

  1. I didn’t see Myspace in the list of OpenSocial sites, have they committed now?

    I think it will be interesting to see how this plays out because each platform has different functionality so applications will not run the same on Orkut as Linkedin. And the presentation layer, which has been a Facebook advantage might also be problem.

  2. I didn’t see Myspace in the list of OpenSocial sites, have they committed now?

    I think it will be interesting to see how this plays out because each platform has different functionality so applications will not run the same on Orkut as Linkedin. And the presentation layer, which has been a Facebook advantage might also be problem.

  3. Indeed, just looking at Plaxo Pulse today reveals some thing we take for granted in FB.

    Plaxo’s pulse is (like a Jaiku) aggregating every feed of all of your friends and snowshovelling it into your “pulse” feed.

    So plaxo is like an “open” facebook feed without the filtering.

    suddenly the filtering of your social network feeds seems like the killer value added feature to beat.

    As google learned once already (and built an empire on it), it’s not the quantity of search results that matters, it’s the relevance…

    should be interesting.

  4. Indeed, just looking at Plaxo Pulse today reveals some thing we take for granted in FB.

    Plaxo’s pulse is (like a Jaiku) aggregating every feed of all of your friends and snowshovelling it into your “pulse” feed.

    So plaxo is like an “open” facebook feed without the filtering.

    suddenly the filtering of your social network feeds seems like the killer value added feature to beat.

    As google learned once already (and built an empire on it), it’s not the quantity of search results that matters, it’s the relevance…

    should be interesting.

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