Battle Lines Being Drawn Over OpenSocial

SkiifGeek writes "Microsoft employees have already openly criticized Google's OpenSocial initiative (recently discussed here), and now there's news that one of the first OpenSocial applications, emote by Plaxo, was hacked within 45 minutes of appearing on the Net (it was subsequently pulled while Plaxo looked into fixing the holes). Although coding errors can happen to anyone, leaving evidence of lax programming discipline when all it takes to view your code is 'View Source' is poor form. It seems that the battle lines have been drawn between Microsoft and Google through their social networking proxies, with Facebook getting ready to fire the next salvo in the social networking battle."

OpenSocial isn't going to save MySpace.

[SIGALRM]

First, let's define the problem: Facebook is winning the social network wars. Even though Myspace has a trillion users, it is passe and Facebook is The New Thing. As more people join Facebook, switching costs get lower, leading to a cascade effect. In terms of the diffusion of innovations curve, Facebook is now being heavily adopted by the "Early Majority", indicating they've got a good one or two years left of substantial growth. In Google's eyes, this is a major problem because it can't really afford to "lose" at social networks for the next two years.

The OpenSocial value proposition goes something like this: Adopt opensocial, push your data into more places, and everyone wins. Consumers get their information needs answered in more places, and companies get their footprint in more places. And more or less, I think more relevant social services in more places is a win, but not in the Facebook-killing way.

To put it bluntly, OpenSocial isn't an anything "killer." And OpenSocial isn't going to save Myspace.

I hope this isn't taken seriously...

[east coast]

Who the hell really cares what way the social net wars go? Maybe if you're an active developer I can see it but otherwise it's like arguing over superman versus batman.

This kind of bickering will hopefully turn some people against social networks and get some kids back to doing their own pages again instead of using lame ass templates.

Re:I hope this isn't taken seriously...

[schmidt349]

Are you fscking kidding me? Maybe the best thing about Facebook is that it gives the user zero control over their profile's HTML.

Unless you're a kick-ass programmer _and_ kick-ass designer, the probability that you can produce anything that looks better than Facebook's "lame ass templates" is 1/aleph one.

I'm so glad

[blind biker]

...that I have nothing to do with the universe of social sites and such. From the sound of it all, I am missing nothing at all, eccept an opportunity to waste precious time.

Oh, yeah, slashdot....

First OpenSocial App made by retard. So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

So the first OpenSocial app that someone rushed out the door ASAP to be the first, as opposed to it being a professional tech demo, was made by somebody stupid when it comes to security (aka 99% of developers). So what?

Re:I hope this isn't taken seriously...

[fred fleenblat]

One item that's dissonant is that things like API's are usually targetted at the geeky/nerdy/early adopter crowd. However, the population of myspace and facebook appears to be socially normal teenagers, and they seem genuinely more interested in their friends than in the technology to access their friends.

If people start using an API to target ads or spy on them or maniplate friend counts, the cuteness is gone and these normal non-geeky people will get bored/annoyed and move on to the next social fad.

Ya'all know its a fad, right?

[Shadow Wrought]

The generation of youngsters that is pushing these Social Networks into prominence have the attention span of a crack-addled butterfly. They will flit about and land on the next thing soon enough, and then, after they are done with it, the corporations will notice and will invest in it a couple of years after its lost its prominence. Ask a teen. Any teen.

Like the old skool days

[future assassin]

Where everyone was making GeoCities, AngelFire and etc.. personal websites and linking back too all of their friends. You'd see people who had very little computer knowledge picking up basic html and marking up pages. Yes they were ugly but people learned new skills. You also saw quite a bit more personal and in depth content. This would have survived if it wasn't for god man pop up and under windows clogging peopled computer screens. Eventually the amount of forced advertising made it next to impossible to create a page that wouldn't piss off new viewers with pop ups or taking over a 1/4 of someone computer screen.

It's just more lock in

[agentultra]

I don't understand why any tech-savvy early adopter would be dying to lock into a platform. The companies are just as hungry for users to use their platform. I'm guessing it's all to lock in ad-revenue or mind-share or some other sinister corporate plan. It's too bad that the Internet used to be about open-communication. RFC's people! RFC's!! (I'm a big fan of the mention another poster made to the "dusty old RFC" that already solved this problem back in the 80's).

Social networking is dangerous to personal security. It's more about who you know, and sometimes we get involved with scrupulous parties that are not in-favor with the current dominant social circles. How long until creditors, government agencies, and employers exploit social networks online?

If one wishes to maintain a public network and a private one, that's there prerogative and is certainly maintainable. However, imagine a hypothetical situation where someone in that network gets flagged as a bad-apple by some institution. Would it be possible that policies at said institution may flag you as a bad-apple by association?

GeoCities, Angelfire != Facebook, MySpace

[jchenx]

Sites like GeoCities and Angelfire, and how they were used in the "old skool days" are different than the social networking sites today. GC provided a platform for users to do anything. So, you had a huge mish-mash of random personal websites (what we'd call blogs and social networking sites today) and of actual, real content (guides to your favorite comic, cooking tips, video game info, whatever).

For those who merely want to be able to have a public diary or a forum where they can communicate with their friends, I think it's a good thing that we have sites like Facebook which provide all of the basic tools. It's certainly much more usable to my friends who I still want to keep in touch with, but aren't computer savvy at all.

On the other hand, Facebook and MySpace are not meant to replace the other type of GeoCities/Angelfire sites, the one with actual content. I agree that a lot of that stuff was pretty in-depth and interesting at times. For those sites, there are other web platforms you'd use to publish your content.

Re:OpenSocial isn't going to save MySpace.

[Anonymous Coward]

Orkut is trivial compared to any of the big networks

FWIW, there's a reason that Google is deciding to build a new social networking application in addition to Orkut. Orkut has been largely abandoned in the US, but it is huge in Brazil (and I believe Russia, but I could be wrong). None of the "big" networks are even close to Orkut in the countries where Orkut is popular. It may be a joke among USians, but Google considers Orkut to be very successful.