Google's New Open Social Platform vs. Facebook
As you have been probably reading, Google has launched their API for their new Open Social developer's platform for social networks. MySpace, Hi5, LinkedIn, Orkut, Ning and a raft of other social networks are already on board and ready to "gang up" on facebook. Well, they are trying to but will it work? Don Dodge has a good article up for the facebook camp. Bloggers around the net have been saying that it is a game changer for members of social networks. We think it is a game changer, but not for the users of social networks, for the app developers.
App developers will now probably focus their energies on BOTH facebook and Open Social. The 50 million users of facebook are considered to be "real people" and one of the most accurate networks. This is not to be ignored and these people that have invested time and energy to build their networks on facebook are not about to jump ship and do it all over again on Orkut, Hi5 or any other network. They are there to stay. So, the only thing that has changed is for application developers who will get access to multiple social networks with one code base (through Open Social).
Furthermore, the Open Social API is in early beta and there seems to be some issues. Also, it is not even live yet, developers can only play in the "Orkut sandbox" to build and test their apps. There is a great article here that details Open Social vs. the facebook f8 platform . If you are a developer, you should read it for sure.
