OpenSocial moves forward
Huh, well, it’s pretty cool that MySpace has opened up it’s OpenSocial action with AppGallery. I have to admit that I didn’t expect such a big player to go live with OpenSocial so soon, so that’s pretty great. I’m a skeptic and continue to be a skeptic on this, but I’d sure love to see it in play.
Looking at the list of apps which seems to be ordered by installation numbers - it’s still early in the game with a few fat head apps in the thousands of installs and then rapidly dropping to a long tail in the hundreds and trailing off for pages from there. It’s interesting to see Facebook staples like Flixster and iLike in the long tail - I wonder how long that will last or if, in fact, the MySpace app ecosystem is going to be a different beast than Facebook’s. That would be really interesting to see.
For me the big test will be in true interoperability between the different OpenSocial containers as more of the big boys release them. How good will the adherence to the specs be? How much will each container extend the specs to provide hooks into their own particular way of organizing data? Or will strict adherence to the spec limit functionality to a lowest common denominator? I’m curious to see how this plays out and if for once in my lifetime I’ll see a true write once, run everywhere technology actually work as advertised.
OpenSocial also gained a huge boost recently with Yahoo joining it’s hallowed ranks. Almost certainly decided as a political move to mess with Microsoft (since MS is backing Facebook and has a mad hate on for Google who is driving the OpenSocial bus…) - it seemed inevitable that they’d ultimately have supported either Open Social or else the Facebook Platform - with a space so crowded with big movers, it would have been silly to try and push one’s own.
And then heading off into wild lala land - remember Bebo? Yeah, they’re big in the UK or something. They were a big member of OpenSocial but then Facebook and did some kinda end run and Bebo became the first Facebook Appplication site (that wasn’t Facebook). Now AOL’s buying Bebo. But TimeWarner’s also looking to hook up AOL and Yahoo! It seems like two big Yahoo possibilities - MS and AOL both are backing Facebook. Huh.
Who knows what’ll happen. If I were a betting man and OTB offered bets on Facebook Platform v OpenSocial, I’d put my money on FB. Fortunately, I’m neither a betting man and OTB hasn’t yet offered those odds (although I’d love to see what odds bookmakers would give!). Nevertheless it is interesting to see how much politics is having an effect on this issue, it’s good times watching this play out, I’ll say that much. What do you think? Is there room for two? Or will it play out Highlander style?
