Googles OpenSocial Strategy money and the art of war err APIs

Developers and techies tend to do that but Google s OpenSocial effort goes well beyond a bunch of APIs. Let s not forget the business strategy. The big plus Developers only have to learn one API. I m more of a business strategy art of war follow the money type of guy. Luckily this OpenSocial effort has a big chunk of all of the above. True to a degree. It s not a zero sum game but the strategy is notable. Maybe Facebook is worth billion. In general Facebook is a nice site and service. Perhaps it s a great business too but I m wary of the hype. Google is using the surround tactic to rattle Facebook. The big question is where Facebook goes from here. It already has an open albeit proprietary API. Does it join Google s band Or does it proceed as it has been. Google with its OpenSocial may be commoditizing social networking apps. That won t happen today since each social site will have its own container. But is it really a big stretch to see these APIs s! omehow sprinkling Google ads around. It is so hard to sneak up on the top dogs these days. Think Microsoft meets Netscape. Today it s a different game. The end game is still the same though. Developers are important but users may not follow. Thursday s news was all about developers. Users are still on Facebook. Over time we ll see if social networking habits change over a few APIs. Social networking Feature or business Google with OpenSocial could commoditize social networking. Just wait til profiles and identities are portable it ll happen . business question is far from resolved. Corporate IT folks need to pay attention. Rest assured that these APIs are going to squeak into your enterprise. Will OpenSocial herald an era of open APIs in enterprise applications Initially no but we ll see. The communications lessons to be learned. Almost as interesting as the OpenSocial was the flow of information. Real time blogging and Twittering questions to a surrogate t! o ask questions were commonly deployed. What s this mean for the ente rprise It means it s impossible to control information. Where s the money Monetization is going to be very interesting. Naturally Google assumes its partners will use AdSense. This sets up an interesting battle of the social ad networks in the future. Google everyone not Facebook.

Source: http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=6863


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