Managing The Threat
My first reaction to the NYTimes article talking about MySpace joining Google-led OpenSocial alliance is, “You sneaky [explicitive].” Facebook has been pioneering the social network platform, and good ‘ole “open” Google comes around with their developer know-how weight and establishes an “alliance” to make things “open.”
Googles move is simply about establishing uniformity, controlling or “leading” the direction of the interfaces and ultimately spending vastly less money getting a foothold (and easing the pain) into every social network, and, once again, getting more user impressions and advertising dollars. Google’s social network site, Orkut, is at the margins of popularity, so what better way to get into the biz than lead an alliance of heavy hitters against the potential threat of Facebook in the impressions business? Not only does it help get a foothold into other sites but it could release a tidal wave of information that Google can sick an army of developers to wrangle into a competing site.
Since other social networking sites aren’t up to the game of establishing their own social platform for developers like Facebook is, of course they’re going to line up behind Google and say, “Yeah buddy, over here, this is what we should all do.” When Facebook first opened up their APIs, my prediction was that MySpace was slowly going to lose numbers (or gain them more slowly) and ultimately be a number 2 or 3 player . After all the hype, they obviously sense that this may be the case and are now technologically struggling to keep up. Google smells the blood and is throwing them a lifeline. If you’ve ever seen a MySpace page you know something is seriously wrong with that company’s tech culture. The entire dynamic of a non-social networking company that is based on monetizing user clicks and impressions, leading an alliance to establish a standard for social networking platforms smells extremely fishy.
p.s. I’m waiting for the social networking backlash where people reach a saturation point and won’t accept anything but face-to-face conversation. Time to think about moving to the mountains again.
November 1st, 2007 at 7:31 pm
I think I have reached that saturation point you speak of. In fact, today I sent my last twitter ever (at least that what I’m telling myself).
Personally, I think gadgets, or whatever you want to call them, embedded apps, have been, and will continue to be, the downfall of facebook. Keep your zombies away from me!
Remember frames? Me too.
November 2nd, 2007 at 1:29 pm
i refuse to do facebook and i think i delted my friendster account. i can’t take it anymore…mostly i can’t deal with the lack of actual communication and people i don’t even remember asking to be my friend. “no, you cannot be my friend, sir. i said, good-day!”