Don Dodge on The Next Big Thing : 50M Facebook users don't care about OpenSocial APIs

Don Dodge on The Next Big Thing

50M Facebook users don't care about OpenSocial APIs

There are 50 Million Facebook users who don't know what OpenSocial APIs are...and don't care. There are about 5,000 tech bloggers and developers who think it is a revolution that will "Checkmate" Facebook and leave them with no moves. TechMeme has over 100 stories saying that OpenSocial is awesome and Facebook is dead. MySpace joins Google on OpenSocial initiative. OK, surely that settles it, Facebook is dead. Nope, not in my opinion.

Facebook is about the user community. Facebook has always been focused on the user community and providing a great user experience. Does this user community know or care that the apps are built using FBML vs. XML? Nope. There are already at least 20 other social networks out there to choose from. Are they fleeing Facebook for these alternatives? Nope. It is all about the community, and where your friends are. Are there some users who would like to transfer their Facebook friends list to another social network? Probably some. Maybe even 5,000.

Are Facebook users going to cancel their account? Nope, I doubt it. OK, so every tech blogger and social network developer is going to cancel their Facebook account and go to what? Orkut? Even if they did that would amount to about 5,000 users which is less than one/one hundredth of one percent of Facebook users. Or put another way 99.9999% of Facebook users will be happy to stay right where they are. And, Facebook probably adds 5,000 new users a day anyway. So the impact (revolution) will be over in one day. By next week this is old news.

Did Facebook users approve this? When I agreed to be a friend of Robert Scoble, Mike Arrington, Marc Andresseen, and others on Facebook, that was just Facebook. Did I agree to have my "friend relationship" exposed on Orkut or 20 other social networks? No. Don't get me wrong, I am proud to be friends with Robert, Mike, and Marc. But, I think most users would agree that they didn't expect that their "relationship" would be exposed on other social networks. Or, that their name, picture, or any part of their personal profile would be exported to another social network. There may be a significant privacy issue here, or some questions about the use of PII (Personally Identifiable Information).

Will developers stop building Facebook apps? No, of course not. Facebook provides a pretty good API set and a pretty simple way to develop applications for Facebook. Does anyone really think that developers will abandon Facebook and instead only write to the OpenSocial API set? Seriously, what are these tech bloggers thinking? Developers are very skilled at building web apps that work on both Internet Explorer and FireFox, or Windows and Linux. It really isn't a big deal to use Facebook's FBML which is just XML with extensions.

Not one single app has been written and not one single user has left Facebook, and already the tech cognoscenti is saying Facebook is dead. Get a grip guys.

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Published Friday, November 02, 2007 8:10 AM by Don Dodge

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	Munim said: What you say is true... but the open facebook API was its USP in social networks which was driving away all the users from other networks to facebook for its large variety of third party applications... Now, since all the other networks have a common API for application development, they will also appeal to application developers...and then, users. But like you said, facebook is certainly not going to die... mainly because of the first point you mentioned... and the fact that facebook can develop its own container for Opensocial Apps. What will happen... is that it will stop users leaving other social networks and join facebook. November 3, 2007 1:46 PM
	devin said: FB won't die, but it will be hardpressed to do something when Google releases Socialstream into the wild... Also, the point of OpenSocial isn't to share every bit of information about each separate SoNet with one another. For instance, my Myspace (or whatever) pics and contacts and wall (etc.) sure won't show up in my LinkedIn profile (users would freak, obviously). So your "did FB approve this" point loses a lot of relevance in this regards... Anyway, so FB won't die, but when developers realize that they have access to an easy to learn API (HTML & JS) that is cross-multi-platform there will be some sound motivation to develop (maybe) more for OpenSocial than FB. Maybe FB will just join OpenSocial. Wouldn't that make for interesting targeted advertising and an interesting change in the MS-Google relationship...? November 3, 2007 9:31 PM
	Katherine said: All social networks "as we know them" will die and probably sooner than we all realize. Is that not the whole point of Web 2.0? Our existance on the web will soon become our own with the control to display or not display information across wherever we want it displayed - as well as to use whatever applications we want along the way. In essence - the "sites/conglomerations" are going to have to take a backseat, fade into the background and no longer exist as a destination but simply a provider or vehicle. Sooner than we all think. November 4, 2007 5:33 PM
	Don Dodge said: Munim, Thanks for your comment. I'm not sure I agree that users flocked to Facebook because of all the widgets and apps. In fact, Facebook was a runaway success long before they opened the platform up to 3rd party apps. The OpenSocial APIs will help the other social networks attract apps and widgets...but I'm not sure that will result in more users. Time will tell. Don November 4, 2007 8:55 PM
	Don Dodge said: Devin, Good point. Facebook may decide to support the OpenSocial API sometime in the future. They already have over 7,000 widgets and apps, so I don't see a clear benefit to them, but they may decide to at any time. Don November 4, 2007 8:57 PM
	Don Dodge said: Katherine, I think you are right. That is exactly what Web 2.0 is about...having our own space that we control. We are very early in the social network game. There will be lots of twists and turns, but the direction is that we will have more social and more personal features in all applications. Don November 4, 2007 9:00 PM
	Don Dodge on The Next Big Thing said: Google's OpenSocial API initiative got a lot of buzz and hype last week which I thought was misguided November 5, 2007 4:40 PM

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About Don Dodge

I have been in the software business for more than 20 years. I started my software career with Digital Equipment Corp, aka DEC, in the database group. I worked with 5 software start-ups over the next 12 years. Forte Software was the first multiplatform object oriented development environment. AltaVista was the first search engine on the web. Napster was the first P2P file sharing network. Bowstreet was the first web services development environment. Groove Networks was the first secure P2P collaboration platform. Now I am at Microsoft...the biggest start-up in the world... working with VC's and start-ups in the greater Boston area. The goal is to help VC's and start-ups be successful with Microsoft, and together, provide great products for our customers.

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