Comments on: MySpace Joins Google’s OpenSocial

By: lawrence goldstein

lawrence goldstein — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 20:42:55 +0000

Checkmate! Game over. Facebook is toast! Why? Because if Facebook joins Google’s OpenSocial they would be admitting defeat and become just another sheep in Google’s herd but if they don’t join they will die a slow and painful death. Why? Because Google is offering to host the apps that developers create on it’s platform which means developers don’t have to pay for hosting fees or bandwidth. Many apps that became popular on Facebook caused their owners more money to maintain due to increased bandwidth than they were making from ads. As a result few saw any real profits.This addresses that problem. I can’t help but wonder what the executives who defected from Goggle to Facebook when Facebook was the flavor of the week are thinking now. Probably something like…oh s___!what have I done! Make no mistake this is a killer app. Advertisers only care about the bottom line and who can deliver it best. Thousands of websites using the same common API(not a day will go by from this day forward without a major website announcing they’re joining Googles/Myspace OpenSocial)or one website,Facebook using a variation of HTML that’s not compatible with anything. Myspace and Google together is a unbeatable one two punch. Besides, Facebook is still on a learning curve as can be seen by how they are constantly changing their developers documentation and rules for conducting business on the platform not to mention apps disappearing into thin air. Google/Myspace is the gold standard and will implement OpenSocial much more smoothly. Google/Myspace was in the widget game way before Facebook opened up to developers only six months ago. Facebook is a walled garden and it indiscriminately picks and chooses which apps get high visibility while it tweaks it’s platform to keep other apps from succeeding. Also they deny apps submission into their directory on a whim thus a large underground subset of apps some of which are very popular will migrate from Facebook where they were denied entry for no apparent reason over to Google/Myspace. Facebook belongs to a bunch of nouveau riche wannabe stuck-up spoiled brats who thought they had the world on a string. Now they must eat humble pie and bow down and kiss the ring that is Google/Myspace. Oh well,so much for Facebooks 15 billion dollar valuation. They’ll be lucky if they can get 1 billion now. Facebook got greedy and as a result didn’t cash out when the opportunity presented itself. Why develop on Facebook which claims to have 50 million members when you can develop on Google’s/Myspace platform which has 200 million members…do the math. Stick a fork in it! Facebook is toast!

By: » Pandia Weekend Wrap-up Nov 3

» Pandia Weekend Wrap-up Nov 3 — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 15:03:31 +0000

[...] MySpace Joins Google’s OpenSocialMySpace and Google announced that the largest social network in the world will be joining the developing initiative by the largest search engine in the world (MarketingPilgrim Nov 1, 2007) [...]

By: Dining Tables

Dining Tables — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 15:26:53 +0000

The competition is indeed formidable. I think that Facebook should join the standard asap.

By: the about

the about — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 12:19:57 +0000

Ah, good ol Myspace making some moves lately. Took ya long enough, hopefully you still have some active users who will embrace all the new incoming useless apps.

By: db

db — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 22:57:02 +0000

Its pull tilt game on whatever happens next.

By: rcjordan

rcjordan — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 22:41:14 +0000

sell out to MS

By: WaterSubject

WaterSubject — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 22:18:34 +0000

waiting for this deal to fail and people to understand that even if its done by Google it does not mean the success is guarantee.

By: Steven Bradley

Steven Bradley — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 22:03:53 +0000

Funny Kevin.

It’s hard to think that OpenSocial won’t take off given how much it makes sense to developers. It’s a hit to Facebook, but if they aren’t already thinking about it they may want to join.

Facebook could offer more through it’s own markup to try and convince people to develop Facebook only apps, but OpenSocial could become a necessity.

Developers tend to like standards since it makes the work much easier.

By: Kevin Norman

Kevin Norman — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 20:54:23 +0000

I would say Facebook’s best move would probably be to find a bunch of disease ridden alley cats and relocate them to MySpace and Google HQ in hopes that they will bite or scratch some of their key employees.