Google Drops The Bomb MySpace Joins The Fight

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Google Drops The Bomb: MySpace Joins The Fight

By: Nathan Weinberg
2007-11-02

Google formally announced its OpenSocial social network application platform yesterday, and there was a bombshell announcement that...

...they held back till the end: MySpace is in! MySpace, the most popular social network, bigger than even Facebook, is a partner in OpenSocial and will support OpenSocial applications.

Also announced as joining: SixApart, owners of Movable Type, TypePad, LiveJournal, and Vox; plus Bebo, joining previously announced partners Orkut, Oracle, Ning, XING, Tianji, Viadeo, Salesforce.com, Plaxo, hi5, imeem, Hyves, Friendster, Engage.com and LinkedIn. Many complained when word leaked out yesterday that Googles partners, aggregated, barely register in the U.S. compared to Facebook, but the totality of this group has to have twice the market share of Facebook, with MySpace beating it all by itself.

OpenSocial just went from being an opening shot to a sure-fire game changer. With MySpace supporting it, its important; with everyone but Facebook supporting it, it becomes the de facto new platform. Basically, there are now two platforms, Facebook and OpenSocial, and unless OpenSocial fails due to poor infrastructure or implementation, both will be major market forces.

Facebook was offered a place in this group, but it declined, and with big evil Rupert Murdoch even joining the movement, they now look like the entrenched anti-user corporate entity, a big blow. OpenSocial wont kill Facebook, it may not even convince Facebook users to leave, but it does kill Facebooks network effect. There is no longer a pressing need to switch to Facebook because all the applications are there, the lock-in is pretty much over.

In the long run, this isnt the Facebook killer, not even close. Facebook will thrive because Facebook users dont want to switch; they like Facebook. However, Facebook wants to have a thriving developer community, and to get it, theres still a good chance theyll join Open Social, or try to compete with it. If Facebook joins, itll make switching around easier for users, and if it doesnt, well have a two-player war here, and those are always exciting to watch.

On one side, weve got Facebook and Microsoft, on the other, Google, Fox, and a lot of little guys. Of course, most of the important little guys (the developers, not the networks) already work on Facebooks side, making them the most important players. The two sides are going to fight over developers, and Microsoft is very good at courting developers. If they can get some integration between Facebooks Markup Language and Windows Live Spaces, the worlds most popular blogging service, perhaps via Microsoft Gadgets (which also run on Windows Vista), weve got a powerful closed solution on Facebooks side.

The most important thing to remember is that we have no idea what Google supposedly gains from this. Yes, theres a chance that Google just became the operating system of the internet, but theres nothing in this so far about monetization. Google cant sell the platform, and with MySpace in Orkut doesnt look so important anymore. The programming languages are too standard for Google to sell developer tools.

We dont know yet what Google stands to gain, except for being important and making no money at it. The only real gain: Google diminishes Facebooks influence, and thus avoids Facebook becoming a major competitor, if this play succeeds. Things just got so interesting, nobody knows where its all going to end up.

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Tag: Google, MySpace, OpenSocial

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About the Author:
Nathan Weinberg writes the popular InsideGoogle blog, offering the latest news and insights about Google and search engines.

Visit the InsideGoogle blog.


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