Social Networking Turmoil: Google's OpenSocial vs Facebook

Google's OpenSocial

Google on Thursday, unveiled OpenSocial suppose to be the biggest Trump Card Google could produce for a while now.

OpenSocial's open APIs will allow third party developers to create applications that will work on any social network that joins Google's open party. The set of APIs will allow third-party programmers to build widgets that take advantage of personal data and profile connections on a social networking site.

MySpace and Bebo have joined this Google Network: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/02/technology/02google.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Besides Orkut, MySpace and Bebo a number of other popular social networking platforms such as LinkedIn, hi5, XING, Plaxo, Friendster and Ning have already come on board OpenSocial. Salesforce.com and Oracle too are supporting OpenSocial.

What it means for Facebook?

OpenSocial comes close on the heels of Facebook's blazing growth based on opening its social graph to developers and Microsoft's $240 million investment in the company. Microsoft trumped Google in the bidding for a piece of Facebook. Google's bigger social networking ambition is believed to be one of the reasons Facebook decided to deepen its partnership with Microsoft instead.

Facebook's problem is that for developers to build applications it requires use of FBML (Facebook Markup Language) for security reasons, thus it also makes code unusable outside Facebook. Hence, OpenSocial which allows developers to write in normal java script and html with only minor adjustments needed for the code to work on its platform will gain much more popularity than Facebook hence forcing Facebook to change its approach in the near future or loose its rapidly growing market share.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/31/technology/31google.html

Icing on the Cake (for Google)

The list of developers feeding applications to Google includes three of Facebook's most popular widget suppliers - Flixster, Slide, RockYou and iLike.