On Wednesday night at the Web 2.0 Summit, when Rupert Murdoch and Chris DeWolfe were on stage announcing that MySpace is going to open up its innards to developers and try to seriously compete plataforma-a-plataforma with Facebook, you’d think there would have been cheers from the programmers audience. And there were.
Except there was at least one, very loud, very forceful attendee who stood up and demanded more. It was Marc Canter, the CEO of Broadband Mechanics, who seems to be a fixture in the audience at every major tech conference I go to these days, always throwing bombs at the official panelists. Canter asked Murdoch and DeWolfe (as he had asked Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg earlier in the day) whether they would agree to create not just one-way APIs for developers to create apps inside MySpace, but two-way APIs so that they (and MySpace members themselves) could take those friend lists to create social applications outside of MySpace. He was saying, in effect, “Thanks for letting us in. Now tear down this (other) wall!”
At first blush, it sounds like something that will never happen. Social networks like MySpace and Facebook are happy to let other developers make their platforms better by creating apps for inside their Websites. But their customer lock-in is the fact that only they understand the connections between you and everyone on your friend list. Why would they give away the one thing that gives them competitive advantage and creates compounding network effects? This is the big knock against Facebook. It’s a black hole. Everything can go in, but nothing can come out. (It won’t even forward e-mails—you have to login just to read messages from other Facebook members).
But creating a two-way API is probably one of the smartest things MySpace can do right now. Instead of merely being reactive to Facebook, it could trump it by being even more open. In terms of attracting outside developers, the two big honey pots are big audiences and open platforms. If the Web is the platform, then any barriers to moving data in or out of a Website (or Web-based application) will one day become a barrier to growth rather than a barrier to entry.
Already, smaller, more forward-thinking startups like Twitter and Twine are embracing two-way APIs where the data you put into the service can be freely taken out. Six Apart just announced its Relationship Update Stream project, aimed at making it easy for Websites to let you take your friends with you. Google plans on taking this approach with its social network and other services. And speaking to folks from MySpace in the hallways at the conference here, I was assured that when it does open up its platform it will be a two-way street. At least, that’s MySpace’s intention. I got the feeling, though, that they have not yet worked out the details of how exactly they will do that. We’ll find out once the API’s finally come out. But this wall is going to come down one way or another.
(Photo courtesy Dan Farber).
First!
http://www.freemyspace.com/
I say give Brad Greenspan his money back!
Then talk about the platform. The man earned it.
A two-way API blows away their greedy business models. They want to control the advertising at all times. It’s implied that the two-way street would relinquish that control.
They’ve been telling their investors, “We can generate X pageviews with a Y conversion of ad revenue.” They don’t want to tell their investors that the game is changing and they can’t actually generate the revenue they previously expected.
Eric, this is great, thanks for posting this as it helps validate something we’ve been talking about for several months doing to our site and everyone is telling us that we’re crazy \ why would we want to do that \ that’s a stupid idea -etc. But I definitely see the merit. Dual API can only serve to enhance because you still have the the link in rather than losing someone completely. I’m all for this…
But wait, you never told us how Murdoch and DeWolfe responded to the question. What was their response, if any?
http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Amyspace.com
There’s the reverse API right there. People here are not the type to change their own oil. And yet somehow they can use SOAP?? LOLZ
Appreciate Techcrunch pointing a valid point. The players would be forced to have two way API’s. Thats the trend and the users will be moving to that trend supporting networks. Google as always understood the potential.
http://blogkatt.blogspot.com
Users don’t want to go to joeswall.com to post on their friends Facebook wall. They want to go to Facebook.com. Think about it.
In response to Ryan Merket’s msg.
Users don’t necessarily want to go to FaceBook to post to their friends, they would want to post something in the least amount of steps possible. If they were at a site that contained a widget that allowed them to post to their friends without leaving the current website then that is how they are going to do it.
R.
“But creating a two-way API is probably one of the smartest things MySpace can do right now.”
It’s probably one of the most dumbest thing MySpace can do right now, actually, if it wants to compete with Facekbook and Co that is. One way API, sure! Two way API, would be suicide.
It always amazes me that in the wide open spaces of the web, companies’ strategies for growth are still based on creating artificial barriers, not compelling products. Guess human nature doesn’t really change: mine is mine, and yours is mine.
In Response to Ryan Merket’s msg…
For some apps, clearly it doesn’t make sense to develop on the ‘other side of the wall’. For other apps, it clearly does. No, the widgets like ‘top friends’ and ‘where i’ve been’ don’t necessarily make sense out of facebook’s 4 walls.
However, even taking a look at my company it would sense to add ’social graph’ functionality to it without having to build within the FB platform. When people visit SkiReport.com, how cool would it be when they visited a resort to say ‘25 of your friends have skied here before, they’ve said this about it.’
Yes, i can create ski area pages within the FB platform… but it doesn’t belong there.
Linux = very open = 2 dozen distros
Windows = blackhole = 0
who’s making $$
remember, anyone can clone these sites.
That (a 2 way API) is exactly what we have at edgeio. It enables inbound and outbound data (hence edge IO). I have to disagree that this approach threatens a business model. Infact I would strongly suggest the opposite. By enabling advertisers and other publishers to come inside whilst allowing data to be taken outside the entitry at the center increases its reach into a publisher network and so extends “the social graph” beyond its borders. Money follows traffic and links and so in theend this is a big win for all 3 parties (inbound partners; outbound partners and the middle).
Open is best, Canter is right. And if that is right, it will happen! Only question is who will jump first.
Keith Teare
ceo/co-founder/edgeio
Joel has wanted to be able take down the other wall since 2000.
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/.....00052.html
Does Mr. Murdoch even know how to imbed Youtube vids on myspace? Look at him sitting there looking like he invented the http://WWW.
So what was Murdoch’s response to the question !?
I can’t see why being the first to provide a ‘2-way’ api would be of great benefit to MySpace. Ultimately, they will probably have to do this if other big players (ie: FB) do it, but right now I can’t see much incentive for them.
Also ‘2-way api’ is vague. I believe Marc Canter is interested in portability or de-centralization of the graph of social connections. Achieving something like this requires a good deal of standardization among networks. MySpace allowing you to simply extract a list of your friends isn’t going to add a lot of value to anything if those friends details have no significance outside the MySpace platform.
Is it just me or does this sound like the exact same debate a few years ago between cell phone providers? You can’t do xyz because blah blah blah
The more things change, the more they remain the same… I figure in a few years, when social network sites die off, this will happen but until then, there is too much a profit motive invested in keeping the status-quo.
Jon
Facebook already has a 2-way API. Everything you can do with an embedded Facebook application you can also do with a completely external web application. It’s well documented on developer.facebook.com, and has been implemented already for both external web sites and even external desktop applications.
Assuming you knew that, perhaps what you’re calling for is not a 2-way API (as that already exists) but for more functions to be added to the existing API: ability to view wall messages, the news-feed, etc. Currently you can’t do this with internal or external Facebook applications.
Please, Myspace, GIVE US TWO WAY API and I might just develop for your platform
Yet again, I can see where they’re coming from. Twitter and Twine are smaller startups and have less to lose, whereas MySpace has a lot of advertising money at stake.
very interesting
where can you sign up to get info on the myspace API when it’s released?
I haven’t found any resources other than these blog mentions…
I’m all for the fully open 2-way APIs.
If your service is good enough, you’ll be able to monetize it anyways.
//Anders, CEO at Tablefinder.com
I wrote about this last month:
http://www.allfacebook.com/200.....this-wall/
Thanks to Google launching their platform, they are going to force many of the social networks to open up. It’s not going to happen immediately but I could see it happening in 12 months potentially.
Just out of curiosity, why aren’t federated identity, profile, and address books part of this discussion? Once these are in place, the functional APIs fall into place.
I don’t understand why there isn’t a movement to pressure the big SNs and search providers to adopt the Liberty Alliance Project standards. There are two federation specs, and a number of products that work together.
Right now, implementation cost might be prohibitive for small startups, but it won’t be long before these solutions are more or less turnkey. If the big SNs go their own way (as suggested here), we’ll end up with proprietary APIs and a legacy that will take years to undo.
Yahoo, Google, AOL, Microsoft, Facebook, and MySpace would be perfect identity providers. Somehow, it just feels like what’s good for us is good for them too. Perhaps that’s what the smart guys at Google are thinking.