Sexy Widget

Facebook's Social Operating System

Today was supposed to be about Bebo.  How they were making it easy on us app developers by allowing us to port our Facebook apps over, virtually as is, to Bebo.

But as  Bebo founder Michael Birch was explaining this morning about how they are "in touch" with (their direct competitor) Facebook about keeping the Bebo platform synced with Facebook's, it hit me.  Today is not about Bebo.  It's about Facebook.

It's about Facebook deciding that a Social Operating System cannot reside on just one domain, even if that domain is a powerhouse like Facebook.com.  Social Operating Systems need to reside on all social media sites, not just the ones you own.  In some ways, Facebook's decision to share their platform architecture can be seen as a statement of mortality.  Facebook is hot today, but will it be 3 years from now?  Sharing the platform architecture itself is a way for Facebook to push its own platform out to the edge, beyond the Facebook domain.  It's a hedge against the inevitable fickleness of a social network's users.

Today is also about Facebook realizing that in the social networking world, they don't have to pander to Google by joining OpenSocial.  When it comes to engaged users and engaged app developers, Facebook is calling the shots.  No amount of Google PR and BizDev work can change this.  If you want to add apps quickly to your social media site, the only rational move is to prioritize conforming to Facebook over building to some vague Google press release.  Bebo did what they had to do.

To date, we have talked about the social media scene being divided into the aggregators - those big communities like Facebook, MySpace, and Bebo that pull together widgets and content and apps from all over the web - and publishers - companies like Slide and RockYou and Hungry Machine and RateItAll that are building features and pushing content to those sites.

Facebook did a little mold breaking today.  By making their platform architecture available to sites that are direct competitors to them, they have tipped their hand a bit.  Their goal is not to be the biggest social network.  Their goal is to be the social operating system upon which all other social networks reside.

Bebo Prioritized Facebook Compatibility over OpenSocial

During the Bebo platform announcement this morning, someone in the audience asked how Bebo's announcement tied into OpenSocial - Google's initiative to create a common set of APIs that would allow third party applications to work across multiple social networks.

In response, Bebo founder Michael Birch talked about limited engineering resources, and how once their Facebook compatible platform was stable, they would begin working on OpenSocial.

Wow. 

Facebook 1, Google 0. 

When OpenSocial was announced, everyone (including me) marveled how Google had so deftly outmaneuvered Facebook by convincing every other social network to get on board with OpenSocial.

In a post entitled "Checkmate?  MySpace, Bebo and SixApart to Join Google OpenSocial," Michael Arrington said:

Suddenly, within just the last couple of days, the entire social networking world has announced that they are ganging up to take on Facebook, and Google is their Quarterback in the big game.

It would appear that this may have been a little premature.

When faced with the decision of whether to build an OpenSocial compatible platform or a Facebook compatible platform, Bebo decided to build for the platform that could bring them the largest number of apps in the shortest amount of time - Facebook.

It looks like its going to take more than vague announcements to unseat Facebook as the developer platform of choice - even if it is the mighty Google making the announcements.

Are you ready with your MySpace Apps?

As has been widely speculated, it looks as if MySpace is in fact going to launch a Facebook-like Platform within a couple of months.  The first step will be to launch a directory of widgets, followed by a full on platform.

See TechCrunch and Webware for more.

I have a couple of concerns about how effective the MySpace platform will be.  Specifically, I feel as if the MySpace distribution channel has been a bit spoiled by spammers - I rarely check my MySpace inbox anymore as it's so often filled with spam.  Second, I feel that the MySpace friend networks are less driven by real life relationships, and are more likely to consist of randoms.  I will be less likely to care what these randoms are doing, which makes a news feed consisting of their app driven activities far less interesting.

I hope to be proven wrong.

LinkedIn Platform Access Based on Who You Know

It sounds like LinkedIn's platform play will be on an invite only basis, in order to avoid the horror of busy professionals sending digital hamburgers to each other.

It seems sort of fitting that you will need to use your connections for the chance to give your web service access to LinkedIn's social graph.