Let’s call a spade a spade here. When the third largest social network in the U.S. announces a platform for social applications that mirrors Facebook’s and appeals to Facebook developers, it is a snub to Google. For all the promise of Google’s competing OpenSocial platform (which Bebo is also supporting), it is just not ready yet. Bebo’s embrace of Facebook says a lot about the true state of competition between Google and Facebook. The fact that Bebo will have Facebook apps running on Bebo before OpenSocial apps indicates where its priorities lie.
When OpenSocial launched, we suggested that Facebook might have no choice but to join it as well, given all the initial support from other Websites and application developers that Google was able to muster. But this move suggests otherwise. Facebook is not going to join OpenSocial unless it has to. In fact, Facebook actually helped Bebo with this effort, and for good reason.
How does Facebook crush OpenSocial? By helping to make Facebook applications easily portable to other social networks. It would rather open up its own application platform to other social networks and compete head-to-head with OpenSocial. That’s the game plan. Facebook already has all the developers anyway. This is Facebook’s game to lose. Round Two goes to Facebook. But can it get LinkedIn, Hi5, Friendster, and others—some of whom have opened up their own platforms to outside developers—to also play ball?
(Read our on-the-scene coverage with full details about Bebo’s platform here).
Update: In fact, what I suggested above is exactly what Facebook is doing. (See this post on the Facebook developers blog). And this was just added to its wiki for developers:
In the next step of opening up Facebook Platform, Facebook is now making its platform architecture available as a model for other social sites. Facebook will even license the Facebook Platform methods and tags for use by other platforms, which means that the 100,000 developers currently building Facebook applications can make their applications available on other social sites with no extra work.
It is mano-a-mano, folks.
unless Google just buys everyone else. In which case, these other jokers may win the battles…Google will win the war!
I thought OpenSocial was delayed and nobody is using it, and if that’s true, it’s logical they would just choose facebook out of availability vs the snub.
You guys don’t work in the same building. I can tell. The sheer lack of coordination between you and Marc reeks of decentralization.
Do you guys go to work in your underwear?
I have to get up, shower and go to the office every day and be presentable in front of hundreds of people in an office building. Sucks right?
=~ s/Marc/Mark/;
I understand the value prop to Businesses in all of this, but I think all of the hype with apps is destroying the user experience. I have been tempted to cancel my facebook account because I am sick of people asking me to pick flowers with them and throw pies at their friends.
It’s all so stupid on a B2C level.
Has anyone noticed that MSN.com is DOWN?
I share our first hand experience. We first embraced OpenSocial. Found too many missing pieces. So we reverted to having to clone FB apis. We also explored OpenSocket, but too much overhead. So, what Bebo’s doing is exactly what we’ve been doing at the backstage. In fact it’s nothing new. A lot of socnet operators had the same dream ideas before OpenSocial surfaced. Given today’s virtualization methodology is well proven and accepted, that’s almost a no-brainer take. It’s much like Amdahl to IBM, then AMD to Intel, then Compaq et al to IBM PC.
If I can cite an old saying in the network field in the 80’s and even 90’s: TCP/IP solves tomorrow’s problem today.. OSI solves today’s problem tomorrow. hmm, just found that OSI bears some similarity to Open Social Initiative (unfortunately)..
/ac.
@3 – you shower? Better change your awe-inspiring-come-work-for-us promo video.
Once again Chris Rectum – you bring nothing but drivel to this community. Get back to us when your search engine has more than 2 hits a day, at which point you won’t give a shit if the TechCrunch editors are in their underwear.
Facebook responds:
http://develope...=1&story=60
—-
http://www.ryanmerket.com/blog
Looks like Facebook has now snubbed OpenSocial as well:
http://www.allf...ith-opensocial/
I’m not sure if the snub is to Google or to the lack of applications for OpenSocial.
Support for OpenSocial results in sitting and waiting for popular apps to be ported over.
Support for Facebook means immediately thousands of apps can be ported to your network, and their users can interact through the apps with each other.
Lack of apps will make it hard for OpenSocial to ever get a firm footing.
@9 and re the Facebook responds.. splendid.. so is that the official FB “open-source” (yes, our hyping it and hinting it) license to clone their apis? It’s time to have that done if not already…!! /ac.
@11 Ryan — imho, no, it’s not (yet) the lack of apps for OpenSocial.. it’s just that the socnet operators find not much help in implementing the OpenSocial server-side’s.. and too much tied to Google Gadgets.. /ac.
people will look back with awe and shame at how much time and energy was wasted on the social app market.
go past the top ten apps in fb and you have to wonder if the attention and rev potential is even paying the hosting fees.
opensocial worked as planned – it is the classic theme of msft and yhoo. you just release a press-release outlining a technology “strategy” that nullifies the delivered product of a competitor. stock gets an instant boost and the competitor is often stymied. msft in particular has done this too many times to count.
bravo to goog for finguring this tactic out. don’t even bother rolling out opensocial at this point…no one cares, you already cashed out on the pr-induced stock boost, and by time 2009 rolls around fb will be passe and the social app market left for dead
@8, the search engine can’t get any hits because it’s not in beta yet. I am working on that. Our other sites get plenty though. Thanks for caring.
I think that bebo is ok, but I don’t see them snubbing Google by doing this.
@14
you might want to ask human pets folks how much page views and ad revenues they from their app.
http://www.face...p?id=2437228683
huh. I always thought the “call a spade a spade” saying was racist. guess not.
http://verbmall...cist-terms.html
“huh. I always thought the “call a spade a spade” saying was racist. guess not.”
Thanks for openly sharing your misconceptions, and not being niggardly about it.
#16,
Are they sharing their revenue numbers?
Personally, I have debated canceling my account with Facebook because of the silly “hugs” and “scrubs quotes” crap. A bit juvenile for me. I would prefer it if those things could be halted before hitting my profile so I didn’t have to waste time ignoring all of them.
Interesting to watch this space rationalize; if I were a second teir player like Bebo (ok, speaking in a north american context), I’d be looking pretty hard for an exit/partnership strategy, not trying to “go for it” on my own and snub potential allies in the process.
Bebo’s lighting up the ’sphere today: http://techwatc...ng.com/tag/bebo
Where as OpenSocial’s coverage is more gloomy – “delayed” “dead in the water” etc…
http://techwatc.../tag/opensocial
Facebook is very nice tool. but we need to find the time to enjoy it!!!
#20 and #22,
Thanks for spamming Techcrunch to promote your “website”
#13 – you’re assuming that this is a tech motivated move by bebo. personally I would be surprised if a company would make a move like this because of lack of support from Google for OpenSocial – that’s a developer’s gripe, not a company’s gripe.
bebo made this move simply because it opens up thousands of apps to their platform and makes them an easy way to increase exposure for every facebook app out there.
Again, that’s why this isn’t a snub at Google – bebo still plans to support OpenSocial, they were just trick enough to also be the first to also support facebook developers (something OpenSocial would have been smart to do!!)
Off topic:
CNet’s NewsBurst RSS reader joins Deadpool. Where’s the update on this one?
@24 Ryan, Bebo’s move is for sure not tech motivated but market share motivated.. in fact, same for the developers. Lack of (adequate) support (to non-launch-partners) was, nevertheless, real – though to be fair, Google ppl did try, though without much timeline commitment (particularly wrt the container dev kits), but look, we’re a new kid in town having an aggressive timeline to launch (our platform, which we hope would be OpenSocial-centric).
That said, it’s a matter of our own switching development priorities — in that, if we take to clone (ie., make compatible of) our api to fb’s spec with little or no modifications to the app developers), there’s better chance for us to have a reasonable count of apps for our launch.. whereas if we focus on OpenSocial first, we face more uncertainty (for our launch timeframe). Thus, in light of this, you’re right in that there’s apparent lack of apps for OpenSocial, but the snub if any is actually to both, though imho it isn’t really the app developers to blame…
That said, and as you also pointed out, bebo (and others, ourselves included) still planning to support OpenSocial.. so it’s not really grievancing on Google/OpenSocial for what they already contributed (quite positively in fact) to the social networking market and community, but the touch of disappointment was, unfortunately, quite real.
Thus, in all, it’s more about (Google’s) managing expectations after the (over)hype.. if they had not taken their marketing pitch too high (to belittle Facebook, by trying to reduce it to a mere OpenSocial Container to-be… but given Msft as the backer, obviously Facebook would never want to be just yet another container.. that said, Facebook has yet to do more (than what they’ve announced today on their wiki pages)…… /ac.
@25, despite, CNet’s http://www.webware.com are still good (but lighter) reads…
Any word on how open this really is?
Will they block certain apps currently available on FB?
Hyperbole aside, this is a sensible move on Bebo’s part. Adopt the functioning de-facto standard while you study the intriguing vaporware as opposed to the other way around.
I don’t know how many people like Techcrunch.
But this Nice… BLOG SPAMMING…
Here comes more shitty walls, twinkles and fluffy shit to the web; with launch partners getting (again) a grossly unfair competitive advantage over the fray who’ll have too hold tight for two weeks before the vampires (penguins, ninjas…) are unleashed into a saturated market where users expectations have been primed to expect trash, affirming the social media doyen’s commitment to ensuring that there’s no quality, substance or utility in this new miserable media. Can’t wait.
Would’ve been even more interesting if Yahoo’s added to the party.. but well, as it stands now there’re two sets of competing protocols too choose from.. or Yahoo’s creating the 3rd set..
Yahoo’s still at the pole position with a few of their core assets, like email or im.. and people want Yahoo’s socgraph data – loyal users for over a decade…
Nothing can touch FaceBook!
http://fakestev...er.blogspot.com
It’s the end of 2007 now and this time last year, I thought the social networking large network battle was over when Myspace got over a 100 million users. As soon as i thought that, Facebook opened their platform and all of a sudden, it was the golden child of social networking and it some case invented spam 2.0 with vampire bites. It hasn’t got as many users as Myspace but its sure valued more by the market.
Reading this article now confirms that these social networking battles are far from over and the one that manages to aggregate the community of both users and developers from both their own networks and also manage to draw users from other social networks may be the eventual winner. Widgets are now the star players of the game.
#17
Racist against spades? How can you be racist toward an inanimate object??
Google Announces Open Consortium to Cure Cancer
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.; BONN, Germany; TAOYUAN, Taiwan; SCHAUMBERG, Ill., December 12, 2007 — A broad alliance of leading technology and pharmaceutical companies today joined forces to announce the development of Betazoid, the first truly open and comprehensive platform for innovation in cancer cures. Google, Pfizer, Amgen, Merck, Genentech and others have collaborated on the development of Betazoid through the Open Cancer Alliance, a multinational alliance of technology and pharmaceutical industry leaders.
This alliance shares a common goal of fostering innovation on cancer cures. By providing cancer researchers a new level of openness that enables them to work more collaboratively, Betazoid will accelerate the pace at which new and compelling cancer drugs are made available.
Thirty-four companies have formed the Open Cancer Alliance, which aims to develop technologies that will significantly lower the cost of developing and distributing cancer cures. The Betazoid platform is the first step in this direction — a fully integrated platform that includes: Wiki, Word Processor, Spreadsheet, Instant Messaging, and Email.
Betazoid holds the promise of unprecedented benefits for cancer researchers, developers and manufacturers of pharmaceutical services and devices. Betazoid celebrates the ethic of the “Beta” — in which product development is quick and iterative. “Why wait for seven years for regulatory approval for a perfected cancer drug when Betazoid can enable a beta cure in months if not weeks”, said Google Chairman and CEO Eric Schmidt. “Today’s announcement is more ambitious than any single product that the press has been speculating about. Our vision is that the powerful platform we’re unveiling will power thousands of different drugs and cures.”
“While Google’s core search markets are maturing, they are focused on breaking new ground”, said Piper Jaffrey analyst Jean Kim. “Open Social, Android, and now the revolutionary Betazoid
platform demonstrate Google’s commitment to innovation and Alliance Creation” he said.
A bit of topic but it is about bepo – they started recently cooperation with one of biggest polish news paper/ media company and they started http://bepo.gazeta.pl and gazeta.pl is one of top polish portals.
sorry for typo i meant http://bebo.gazeta.pl
@ JohnD / #31 – Amen! If Slide et al infect the poor consumers, the dumbing down will be complete.
Googlers listen!
All you people at Google listen up!!!
You need to build a powerful Wordpress plugin for Open Social. And I mean powerful!!!
If you get an OpenSocial Wordpress plugin, the weight of the blogosphere will crush FaceBook.
Uhhh, we need an OpenSocial plugin pretty dern fast too. Can’t Sergey get someone on that pretty quick? You better do it fast otherwise social networking will become VHS vs BetaMax.
Come on!!! Hurry up!!! This is an emergency!
yah….the key behind any powerful website is the platform…..who has the best platform win.. — from jack http://www.thin...theboxtoday.com