Google’s pushing OpenSocial — So… So what?
Howard blogged about the NYTimes article discussing Google’s entry into the Social Platform (really just an API set to allow widgets inside of social networks; let’s not all get term-changey on each other) world, to compete against Facebook directly. Well, sort of.
See the issue that has both made Facebook succeed and makes me scratch my head with this announcement is that Facebook is a mostly walled garden. Actually, scratch that, Facebook is a parking garage. Easy to get in, has those stupid tire-poppers if you want to get out. But because they’re a controlled interface/experience, it’s relatively easy to develop an application for it, somewhat akin to using the standard libraries for Windows or a Mac. You build to their spec and it just fits in. How will this work for a network of partners that includes Orkut, LinkedIn and Ning? Are they simply developing data delivery and ingress standards? If that’s the case — and it’s the only one that makes sense to me — Yawn! Otherwise we’re going to have grey boxes in multiple places. I just don’t see how this will work, nicely, inside of the targets and partners on this list. It’s kind of like how Java was hailed as this AMAZING way to have applets that ran EVERYWHERE in EVERY BROWSER in EVERY ENVIRONMENT! And it sucked. Doing too much is worse, most times, than doing too little. I prefer that they do the “too little” path — but we’ll see when we have details.
(via seeteeohh)
