Google and Friends to Open Source the Social Graph?
All the buzz is social networks these days. I initially wrote the Google "maka-maka" rumors off as a "me-too" strategy. But looks they're taking a significantly different tack. Google and Friends to Gang Up on Facebook - New York Times.
At the Web 2.0 Summit in San Fran two weeks ago, one of the biggest Facebook app developers, Slide, cryptically alluded to new opp that they were spending 80% of their time on. Looks like it was this trans-site platform.
I'm guessing what we're going to see is foreshadowed in Brad Fitzpatrick's manifesto on the social graph. Brad created LiveJournal, an early blogging platform, and now works for Google.
A centralized "owner" of the social graph is bad for the Internet. I'm not saying anybody should ban Facebook, though! Far from it. It's a great product, and I love it, but the graph needs to exist outside of Facebook. MySpace also has a lot of good data, but not all of it. Likewise LiveJournal, Digg, Twitter, Zooomr, Pownce, Friendster, Plaxo, the list goes on. More important is that any one of these sites shouldn't own it; nobody/everybody should. It should just exist.
He goes on to describe some of the necessary components for an open platform approach to centralizing this type of data. This would be a key component of any system to link multiple social networks together into an open API.
UPDATES:
- It's called OpenSocial according to The Times
- TechCrunch has more details on the APIs.
- Google's on info will be available here on Thursday: code.google.com/apis/opensocial
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