OpenSocial – A Facebook Killer?

Posted on November 1, 2007 by Jim Walton

OpenSocial has just been announced, Google and MySpace are joining forces on Google’s platform called OpenSocial and all the big players are on board except Facebook.

Who loses because of that? Not us, the people that make the social web. As a matter of fact, I would say Facebook loses. I wonder how far they can take this “walled garden” scenario.

According to one of Scoble’s many posts this afternoon:

I’m sitting in a press conference with TechCrunch, BusinessWeek, Forbes, and many other press…………Chris DeWolfe, CEO of MySpace says “This will create the new defacto standard.”

Another quote from a different Scoble post:

Google and MySpace just dropped a major bomb on Facebook: they are joining forces to build a new social networking application platform that overnight will be considered the standard.

He goes on to say:

Joe from Flixter denotes why this is SO HUGE: his app will run anywhere that the OpenSocial platform is running. Plaxo. Ning. NewsGator. MySpace. No rewriting of apps.

One thing. Those apps now will run everywhere BUT Facebook.

So, what does this change? We’ll just have to wait and see but clearly it thrusts many social web players to a level where Facebook can not be, at least not at the moment. They were invited to join the club but declined, however, I’m sure the door is still open to them.

Also, don’t miss Scoble’s exclusive interview with Eric Schmidt, Google’s CEO and Chris DeWolfe, MySpace’s CEO, it’s short and it was shot on his cell phone but you hear it direct from the source.

Why am I quoting Scoble so much and not other sources? Why not? He’s there and he brings news as it is. I’m sure you can Google OpenSocial and find a lot more, so please do that if you want to.

But the bottom line is, OpenSocial is a huge announcement and it will change the landscape of the social web. It might even change Facebook!

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5 Responses to “OpenSocial – A Facebook Killer?”

  1. Derek Berg on November 1st, 2007 10:20 pm

    http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/11/01/facebook-we-have-not-been-briefed-on-opensocial/

  2. Derek Berg on November 1st, 2007 10:20 pm

    OpenSocial may only be a Facebook killer for a very short time as Google seems to already be talking with Facebook for them to be part of the “Open”

    People in the know have indicated to me that Facebook and Google have been talking about OpenSocial…including today. So pleading ignorance won’t last as a strategy for dealing with the OpenSocial movement.

    Get the whole story from Tech Crunch here

  3. Matt Singley on November 2nd, 2007 12:55 pm

    I posted on this topic today as well, it’s big news! Have you signed up for Orkut yet?

  4. Jim Walton on November 2nd, 2007 1:22 pm

    I’m on orkut but I honestly don’t know what to do with it. Are you going to post more about Orkut, Matt? I need an education.

    Part of my problem is that I can’t get there from my office, just like I can’t get to Facebook from my office and I don’t think about it when i’m home.

  5. gavin on November 8th, 2007 12:55 am

    i’ve been seeing the news feeds and all. not sure how it is going to be so quickly impacting. but i am sure i’ll be signing up once its going.