2 comments

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  Lee Lorenzen

  1 year ago

  Dan,
  
  Very interesting post. You and I are on the same wavelength. As somone who built a 15+ year-old business around mapping API's (i.e., Mac2Win -- the Mac Toolbox API implemented as a Windows DLL so companies like Fractal Design, Macromedia, Claris, etc. could port their Mac apps to Windows with just a recompile and link).
  
  In the porting technology business, all you have to do is map one Native API to another Target API and this insulates the developer from having to learn all the nuances necessary to write apps for these other platforms. The idea you described would be as trivial as what Marc Andreesen did when he spent the weekend mapping the OpenSocial API's into Ning's existing API's.
  
  So, I agree that anyone (not just facebook) could build an API mapping layer and voila! you would be able to write an OpenSocial-compliant app that when linked together with your OpenSocial2Facebook layer would work just fine as a facebook app. The problem with this approach is that there are no OpenSocial apps that need to be ported over to facebook.
  
  Therefore, I suggest this thought experiment. What if Facebook (or someone else) wrote a porting technology that would take the facebook API's and build a mapping layer from them over to the OpenSocial API's. This way you would be moving in the direction from LOTS OF APPS needing porting to LOTS OF WANNA-BE SOCIAL OPERATING SYSTEMS needing apps. Whoever writes this mapping layer could also target MySpace and Yahoo.
  
  In this case, Facebook developers focus on facebook first (which is where all the innovation is) and the Facebook Porting Technology company keeps up with Facebook by writing updated porting layers for each other Social Network that manages to get a critical mass of users.
  
  Thanks,
  Lee Lorenzen
  CEO, Altura Ventures -- the first facebook-only VC
  
  (c) 2007 Altura Ventures LLC.
  reply
• 

  Dan Lester

  1 year ago

  I guess I chose the direction of my API 'experiment' to highlight my message about the real strengths of Facebook. As you have demonstrated over the last 15 years, there are ways around articifical technological barriers if the commercial incentives are strong enough. It will be incredibly deflating for Facebook if, after inventing the 'next generation web platform' (if that's what it turns out to be), they see bigger companies steal the initiative. However excited us tech-heads have become over the platform (and Facebook feels the same), users enjoy Facebook for reasons that have nothing to do with which API they happen to use!
  
  To really tear down these walls, lets get an OpenSocial app running in my OpenSocket for Facebook, but appearing in Orkut courtesy of your Facebook Porting Technology...
  reply