Facebook vs. OpenSocial API
It is interesting to read about the new Google OpenSocial API. Jeremiah Owyang had a great article on his blog about it last week – titled: Explaining OpenSocial to your Executives. The mainstream media jumped on the bandwagon trying to explain things.
But my favorite analysis comes from Don Dodge – 50M Facebook users don’t care about OpenSocial APIs. Sure, he comes to the discussion with a Microsoft bias – but who in their right mind thinks that non-geeks will abandon Facebook and flock to OpenSocial apps? Is OpenSocial likely to drive new traffic to MySpace? Would I want to be listed as a friend of someone I “friended” (amazing how things tend to become verbs) on LinkedIn who has a personal profile on MySpace?
[Tags: OpenSocial social media facebook don dodge marketing 2.0]
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November 5th, 2007 at 1:33 pm
Francois – I’m brewing a post about this topic myself. I tend to agree with you that I’m not sure that the loyal among FB are going to switch over to MS/OS but where I do think this will hurt FB as the non-tech folks migrate toward social networks. It will be interesting to see how this plays out over the next several months.
November 5th, 2007 at 9:31 pm
Google does have 25 million people with orkut, but the community is only big in Brazil. So the combination of different social networking sites is important. However, I think it may actually prove to be an opportunity for Facebook. If they can keep their lead with developers, and join the OpenSocial movement it may actually provide more opportunity for Facebook than Google.