Constructive Deconstruction

Battle of the Social Networks: Will Google’s OpenSocial Affect Users?

November 2, 2007 on 3:21 pm | In Tech Stuff | No Comments

Google should be launching OpenSocial soon and from what I’ve gathered, it’s going to be a common API that works across a conglomerate of social networks. Seems to me like it’s a reaction to the unstoppable Facebook phenomenon. Question is, will this really change anything? And if it does, what exactly will it change?

A few key points are worth noting and from the list of OpenSocial partners, the questions to ask are really:

1. Why are these networks not receiving the kind of growth that Facebook receives?
2. Does OpenSocial answer those shortfalls?

I believe the success of the Facebook largely hinges on the way they keep their users connected and updated amongst each other without anyone having to do too much work. Couple that with a pretty clean interface(If you didn’t clutter yours with Vampires, Slayers, Werewolves and other useless apps that is), you’ve got one heck of a tool.

I’ve longed abandoned my Friendster account because it ate up my time having to actually go to individual profiles to find out more about what my friends were doing and if they’d changed anything significant.

I logged onto myspace once. It was so cluttered that I abandoned it immediately.

Orkut killed off any interest at that moment when I saw my friend logging in to his account from the pc next to me.

Apart from site usability, Facebook has also got the social dynamics right. They’ve successfully created a system that makes talking to your friends really fun and seamless. They’ve also done a great job at allowing you to discover people – from the past and present. And I have to say this again, they have a clean and compact interface. Best of all, they allowed developers to create applications and to allow them to leverage on their userbase freely. Sure there’s a fair share of rubbish applications that float around but that exists on your page only if you allow it to. All in all, at the very core of facebook, they’ve got it right.

How does OpenSocial potentially change anything?

By creating a set of common APIs that touch

- Individual Information(you)
- Social Network Information(your friends)
- Activity Stream(what everyone does)

These effectively changes the ball game a little. ALL developers can create applications that leverage on the userbase that exists on the partnering networks. It also allows the apps to be run off all the various networks(they’ve called it “Containers”) and it opens the door to create a consolidated news feed like that of Facebook(of course, I’m assuming the integration is flawless).

Looking at that, it seems to benefit the developers more than the users. Arguably, the increase in applications could create value for the users in the different networks but if say, as a Friendster user, things are so cluttered anyway…why should I remain there when most of my friends are on facebook too?

My point is, while OpenSocial might create the ability for developers to create applications across networks, this won’t solve the core issues that put Facebook ahead of the pack because ultimately what’s ‘open’ are stuff that common amongst all the participating networks. And if their current problem now lies in the core dynamics of their services, OpenSocial probably won’t do much to help them move ahead.

Maybe it’ll make things more bearable for the user…but I doubt it’ll do more than that.

….Unless of course there’re more drastic changes on the way…Like “Facebook Jumps on OpenSocial Bandwagon”

Images courtesy of Techcrunch.com and Facebook.com