Facebook Counters OpenSocial; Bebo Playing Both Sides
Facebook is ready to counterattack Google’s (NSDQ: GOOG) OpenSocial. The site revealed today that its Facebook Platform would be made available to other social networking sites, allowing developers to easily port Facebook apps to sites that adopt the standard. Facebook’s Ami Vora explained the move on the company’s developer site: “Now we also want to share the benefits of our work by enabling other social sites to use our platform architecture as a model. In fact, we’ll even license the Facebook Platform methods and tags to other platforms. Of course, Facebook Platform will continue to evolve, but by enabling other social sites to use what we’ve learned, everyone wins—users get a better experience around the web, developers get access to new audiences, and social sites get more applications.”
This is the real news behind Bebo’s unveiling of its Open Application Platform. While opening up to developers is a trendy thing to do—both LinkedIn and Friendster just launched similar initiatives—Bebo’s announcement is significant in that the platform is based on the Facebook Platform. Bebo says it will still adopt Google’s OpenSocial in 2008 (when it’s ready), meaning there’s no reason sites can’t be part of both. Google announced several social networking partners when it launched its service, but it doesn’t have any exclusivity over them. While OpenSocial is still waiting to get off the ground, the Facebook Platform already has thousands of apps and the attention of developers, so it’s quite possible that more OpenSocial participants will choose to adopt both systems. So much for surround and conquer. Bebo Release.
Related StoriesPosted In: Social Media, Companies, Facebook, Google, bebo, opensocial
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Comments (2)
Dec 13, 2007 1:22 AM
This me-too gesture coming so quickly after the Beacon blunder will only taint it as the exploitative and commercialized alternative to an open system. The public perception of Google is still one of trust; this is no longer the case with naughty, naughty Facebook.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see companies align with one camp or the other based upon their own business ideologies. i.e. I expect to see lots more Facebook (now “universal”) applications that primarily harvest marketing data while providing only superficial value to a “young adult” audience…
Dec 13, 2007 2:50 AM
You know who has the best Platform and API? Amazon.com
Commerce-based APIs are being lost in the social network Platform shuffle / hype, even though they are the only APIs that provide a clear path to revenues.