Google, Facebook and MS, OMG, this is a mess! it rhymes :)

OK, so MySpace is there too… Then - what do we have?

We have OpenSocial coalition trying their best to pull the developer attention and activity to their platform. They want to have the best applications developed for them and I guess they dream to make it ONLY for them. This is natural, isn’t it?

And we have Facebook with their platform, with all the rest ganging against them, and they are fighting, I guess (at least I haven’t heard of FB joining OS ). This is also natural - FB is already a pretty strong company.

And we have Microsoft officially joining Facebook initiative just several days before. And I don’t think that anybody is taking this as a coincidence

News Corp’s MySpace - I prefer not to consider them as a serious player (but I do consider them a serious power) in this wicked game. They have their role and hardly they are in the jury. [That's only my opinion - maybe I'm just trying to simplify things]

So it is a confrontation - OpenSocial platform v Facebook platform. None of them actually innovate big time. Both of them have their strengths and weaknesses balanced well enough to consider them “equal powers”. Using one platform practically excludes using another. (I mean the social graphs that are locked in). Both of them are relatively essential for the users.

Doesn’t it remind you of something? Maybe if we compare OpenSocial with… PC? Then Facebook would be… Mac? And… Google seems to have taken a “Microsoft approach” to their social networks strategy… And the funniest thing (or say the smartest thing) is that Microsoft took… mmm… Apple Approach?  [Microsoft approach visualized]

In this connection I could say: look at PC’s and Mac’s today - this is what should happen to OpenSocial and Facebook (partially compatible platforms). But there are a lot of differences.

1 - And the main difference in my opinion is - Microsoft is fighting against Google, who are employing MS-like strategies. So Facebook has a general from the enemy army ( not the best metaphor,I admit it ).

2 - Google is only defending themselves with OpenSocial whereas PC was agressing in the 80’s (or were those the 70’s - I don’t know, I wasn’t born yet ).

3 - From what I see, nobody wants to innovate seriously. Whereas in the 80’s (70’s) they tried to.

My bet - Facebook will survive, they will probably lose some users and end up as a niche network for those who like it neat and smart. But isn’t this an even higher precision targeting

P.S. Sorry for the post being so unstructured - the words came from my mind directly to the fingers, I’m pretty short of time

Who’s the TRUE owner of Facebook, MySpace et al? Is it Google vs the rest?

 

So, it finally happened. I mean the OpenSocial project. By the way, can anyone explain to me what Oracle is doing there?

Okay then, to another saga… Dune by Frank Herbert… Where zensunni Fremen wisdom says: “He who can destroy the thing is the thing’s True Owner”

Looks like me and the Google guys have some favorite books in common As this seems to be the philosophy of the G’s.

Anyway… The user will definitely benefit - Google is very kind to their users (unless they want more privacy).

Will OpenSocial rule the party completely - I think not. Take gmail - it IS a better service than y! or hotmail, it IS more open and it IS more useable. But it IS NOT more popular. Maybe because it was launched long after the rivals? but gmail offers a very easy way to migrate without changing the email address and many other nice little things… And still they are way behind yahoo and hotmail…

Will the same happen to OpenSocial? My bet – most facebook and myspace users won’t abandon their profiles – never. They enjoy their walled gardens and don’t care about ad pressure – they have fun. So FB et al will launch more apps once again to show us “how open the platform actually is”, they will do their best to make the ads less irritating and more targeted (which is, in my opinion more of a good than of an evil thing).

But Google has the greatest power – somehow they manage to be innovative without actually innovating. Yes, they can afford sitting on a beautiful hill and watching us tearing our asses into pieces to bring something new to the people. And then taking it from us and calling it their own move. Because they are the True Owners – they can destroy.

That’s why I like Zuckerberg and company – they are their own owners and they fight and they win sometimes.

Also, we are missing an important thing that Alexander Van Elsas once started to talk about – social networks will evolve into something principally new. Some day. A browser-based social network looks more like a real thing to me, and some steps are already made – check out Flock browser built on the Firefox engine. It claims to let you take your friends wherever you are browsing, to see people who are browsing the same site that you are and so on… And this is just the beginning.

Will the current leaders catch up? Google will, definitely. Others – time will show.