MySpace Joins Google's OpenSocial Network

[jtara]

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System: The following message was cut out of thread at: http://www.webmasterworld.com/goog/3492452.htm [webmasterworld.com] by engine - 9:07 am on Nov. 2, 2007 (utc 0)

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MySpace to Officially Join Google's OpenSocial

MySpace and Google have issued a press release that, confirming rumors, announces that the News Corp.-owned social networking site will be part of Google's new OpenSocial developer initiative.

[news.com...]

People are making money from this social networking thing?

Yes. Google, at least indirectly - through their exclusive text advertising deal with MySpace.

I think you can be pretty sure that Google makes a profit on the spread between Adwords revenues from ad placed on MySpace and Adsense payouts to MySpace.

[JS_Harris]

And the idea becomes the institution.

[mikedee]

Bebo has also signed up AFAIK, the docs page is also live (with a video introduction)

[code.google.com...]

Hopfully Facebook will sign up too, it would boost development of social networking apps a lot.

[weeks]

It will be interesting to see if Facebook joins or not. They might have enough buzz right now that developers would work with their stuff first and foremost, then work on Google/MySpace stuff. Tough call, competitive positioning-wise. One does not want to be left out or join late, either. But, if I were Facebook, I'd wait and see right now.

[JS_Harris]

With Microsoft buying a stake in facebook recently I doubt facebook will side with Google anything. It would make more sense for MSN to launch some new competition of its own with a heavy hitter like facebook on board.

We've seen stranger things though.

[mikedee]

I think people overestimate the power of Facebook alone... Their visitor numbers are less than half of Myspace and when adding in all the other OpenSocial members, their numbers are nothing, especially since some of the OpenSocial members make blog software.

Sorry, no hard facts to reference, but I am sure someone will look them up ;)

[jtara]

It may turn out that FaceBook just had their 15 minutes of fame.

[tntpower]

Jealous G$

[JS_Harris]

Facebook graph trends show that it will surpass MySpace in both reach and pageviews by years end. That is, if you place any trust in Alexa.

Myspace just isn't keeping pace with FaceBook and Facebook isn't slowing down by any means according to the data. It's graph continues to accelerate at a faster clip than MySpace.

Friendster has gone flat. Classmates is non existant. It's just MySpace and Facebook now. Unless this move by Google shakes things up MySpace is headed for number two possibly within the next 30 days. Take a look.

[edited by: JS_Harris at 8:05 am (utc) on Nov. 3, 2007]

[mikedee]

I was thinking more about member numbers - MySpace is reputed to be 100 million and Facebook only around 42 million. If you add the others then the member numbers do not make it look like David vs. Goliath.

Even if you look at the page views (which I do not really trust - especially if from Alexia), then all the OpenSocial members added together must still be way more than Facebook + MSN.

Facebook has been around for ages but has only recently seen popularity because of the applications and because they stopped being a niche for college students. My theory is that the social networking sites will get more niche, this will help marketing ads and make for happier users. If the data can be shared across the networks then the individual size of a site is less important because the owners are looking to sell targeted ads. Having a very generic audience will mean that its harder to show relevant ads.

Only time will tell though... Maybe Facebook will embrace and extend this? (Open Social only includes basic information and sites are free to add to it).

[mikedee]

Charles Fitzgerald (Microsoft Platform Manager) has written a blog here with his take on things, his points out that their strategy is to basically shut Facebook off from the search engines and use the internal data to be able to provide targeted ads (ie. so Google cannot).

He then rants on about UNIX for some reason... He certainly sounds annoyed ;)

[platformonomics.com...]

These kind of industry efforts have a very poor track record because they are primarily about competitive positioning as opposed to significant customer benefit. Nevertheless, they remain an almost reflexive impulse if you have UNIX genetic material.

Riight and targeting ads offers significant customer benefit? What has UNIX got to do with this?

Open standards are what makes the web, is he saying we should never have invented a common HTML/HTTP standard? In his world the internet would be MSN and would be based on proprietary protocols offering significant (MS) customer benefit.

In the days of yore when UNIX roamed the earth, vendors would gather together on stage on Monday to praise their commonality, sing Kumbaya and then have to go out and compete with each other for the rest of the week. One of the ways they competed with one another, not surprisingly, was to differentiate their products, which tended to undermine the commonality claim.

Losing it by the end of his post I think, maybe his brain is racing trying to make a rational decision...

Because OpenSocial does not facilitate viral adoption of applications across networks, developers are likely to focus their efforts on the network with the largest user base and that is MySpace by a mile. I suspect most of the developers who play around with OpenSocial in the meantime will decamp and focus on MySpace when their platform arrives. But enjoy the frenzy in the meantime.

Interesting... Did he mean Facebook? Or is he actually saying that MySpace will win because they extend OpenSocial?

Personally I find the whole concept of winning in this context to be very weird, how is a win defined? Complete destruction of competitors? Thats a very Microsoft approach to competition. The rest is just fashion and marketing. If a site with 100,000 visitors makes more profit than a site with 100,000,000 visitors, who 'won'? Oh yeah - a sites value is based on page views or number of entries in a database...