Open Social & Facebook are Just Widgets

The Facebook Developer Platform and Google Open social are really just widgets with a social layer. Chris tells me they are even called ‘OpenWidgets’ by some.

Facebook Developers, especially early adopters, were able to get millions of active users very quickly because they could immediately be put themselves into a community of millions of people with some powerful, viral defaults. The value to the developer is the access (albeit limited) to the users.

Google’s Open Social is useless in this context. It is the same as Facebook… but with no users. So why would you?

Facebook allowing others to clone its model extends the existing value by making ‘widgets’ already developed for Facebook available to their users. Now developers can reach even more users. Its like World of Warcraft increasing the level ceiling from 60 to 70 because it provides fuel to keep the engine running. Developers who already have a few million users are incentivised to keep innovating to reach even more. Everyone wins.

But, even so, Facebook and Open Social are promotional tools… widgets by another name. Its a way of getting your app in front of the users of the container social site but you stil can’t inter-connect.

What if you want to make a social application that is more than a wall, a horoscope, a slideshow, a quiz? What if I want to make a TV that knows what my friends recommend? Or an email client that already knows my relationships and how to reach them? [Snip big list]

I’m proud to be working on the dataportability.org initiative because its leading the way to deliver what Google and Facebook should be doing to create a truly open social web powered by open standards.

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