DISQUS

113.com · 2 years ago

The official licensing of the tags and methods is great -- very great.

Better yet, why not take an extra step and provide some
reference implementation open-source codes (as coding
examples and/or styles)... such that, could, say, our
friend at buddypress.com immediately benefit (and thus
many socnet sites will henceforth benefit also, ie.,
http://factoryjoe.pbwiki.com/FederatedSocialNet...
etc.)

Well done, facebook!!
/ac.

Dan Lester · 2 years ago

Agreed, this is big for the web. But slightly dangerous territory for Facebook.

They would love for their Platform standard to become dominant on the social web, compared to any rival standard receiving that honour. Ideally, they'd prefer their competitors to be too lazy to think about catching up.

If the platform no longer sets Facebook apart - because all sites share the same standard - then at least they can make a business selling the technology behind it. But one open source effort later and the claim that competitors need to pay to use FBML will be about as convincing as trying to copyright the alphabet.

And the suggestion that Facebook might go all the way and open up their social graph would surely make the Facebook social graph dominant - but as you said in your State of Facebook post, their data is extremely valuable. It would be risky to set it free...

Chris Saad · 2 years ago

Facebook has launched ClosedSocial? :)

My thoughts here:
http://www.particls.com/blog/2007/12/facebook-l...

Nate · 2 years ago

I'm curious why you think this would be a "massive blow" to Google....?

Nick O'Neill · 2 years ago

@Nate ... well ... Facebook has provided the solution that Google hasn't. All that Google has provided is a standard. If other social networks decide to use the Facebook platform that isn't "opensocial ready" it's a pretty big move. Additionally, if they end up opening up the social graph, Facebook's users will be immediately transportable across other social networks that they decide to use.

113.com · 2 years ago

On the other hand, while data most valuable data to FB, we don't want their soc graph data (or well, not urgent).. we (and the platform-software/service providers in general i surmise, eg., say wordpress.org or elgg.org, etc.) would want some worthy-of-reference open source codes, say directly in php, plus the very core db tables defs... therefore helping the social platform software developers "to conform to the facebook specs).. this would make the real difference in the FB vs. OpenSocial race.

Joby John · 2 years ago

wow wow wee wow. its going to be interesting to see who is going to adopt it.

Kerry · 2 years ago

This is great news, it allows up and coming social networking sites like citypixel.com to have access to millions of users who can then sign up and create virtual spaces like apartment, cubes, etc... This is huge to the whole SN community...

Pras · 2 years ago

This is tremendously powerful. Why would the thousands of developers on Facebook bother writing for a new OpenSocial platform when they their Apps should (theoretically) work on any other platform that licenses Facebook's platform technology.

Furthermore, Facebook is the one with 150% growth in user-base vs. MySpace's... ?30%? That means it will only take a few more quarters at that rate of growth for Facebook to catch up.

Finally, in terms of 1st to market, based on what I'm reading on TechCrunch, Bebo will have launched Facebook Apps before OpenSocial even gets out the door.

Jesse Farmer · 2 years ago

I've been talking about this possibility since my Introduction to FBML article back in early June, and I'm glad Facebook was the one to get the ball rolling. I figured some other social network would just do it, but it looks like Bebo and Facebook were talking to each other the whole time.

Facebook 2, Google 0

This is a play right out of the MSFT handbook. In the long run it does leave Facebook vulnerable to open source efforts, but the same can be said of MSFT. They're still a $100Bn+ company.

113.com · 2 years ago

Since Facebook is not a software company (while MSFT, or even Cisco is), open sourcing (their own) software will very unlikely harm them, but instead, only reinforces its leading position, for whatever Facebook does or does not do, the Facebook competitors will do anyways (to dwarf Facebook wrt its influence in the market)... /ac.

Robert MacEwan · 2 years ago

With Google's treatment of bloggers over the last couple of months I see folks more hesitant to stand behind Google. Facebook competition with Google is welcomed.