OK, if you recall there are three components of the Liquid HR Economy. What are they again?
1: Direction (Bi-direction) of information flow.
2: Liquidity of Information Flow.
3: Standardization of Information Flow.
And now Google has created OpenSocial, so I think we are making headway with Liquidity and Standardization. I'm going to take a deeper look and see what this API can do towards improving each of the Three. More on this later.
For the moment, I'm visiting blogs and websites that are discussing OpenSocial (is it one word or two?), and I'm starting to sense some mainstream reaction. People are asking: "what's Google getting out of this?" People are lamenting: "I like different social networks -- I like the exclusivity, the differences in rules; I don't want one big social network blob. I like the distinctiveness of different networks."
Q: What's Google getting out of this?
Well, let's begin at the beginning. Google's search engine service led to Google being the middleware platform for internet advertising, helping people put ads on websites (adwords, etc.). The Internet was the platform, and Google capitalized on its function as an ad medium.
Open Social is a strategic extension of that theme: people will use Google's API to again again target people, because social network context and activities are an even more accurate indicator of consumer intention and segmentation. Sorry, I know it sounds crass, but that's how it is, my fellow eaters.
Now let me be clear: ads mean a couple of different things. There are the obvious "Eat at Joe's!" ads (Adwords space), and there is the more abstract form of advertising, where we exploit a social network to get our application or widget used by more people. But, really, that's an ad too. Because it ends up attracting a target audience to our own service or website.
Facebook understands all of this, which is why they followed the growth of their network with an API, and are also launching their own "Eat at Joe's!" style ad platform. This then competes with Google's adwords -- not on the Internet, but on the social network. So naturally Google will counter attack -- if they weren't planning Open Social already. And as we all know, in the technology game, those who do not eventually follow the standard lose the war (unless they can set the standard, and I don't think Facebook can).
Q: Will social networks lose their distinctivess?
No. Pending my research efforts on the API, I'll have an opinion about how much you can really do with it, and what the ramifications are. But at this point, I wouldn't think of the API as a way to create applications for the social networks it accesses. It's a way to get information in and out of the system - it's a way to advertize. If you look on Facebook, the "applications" that people have written there are generally pretty simple, and they really don't break the rules or violate the spirit of the Facebook network. You're still just posting crap on other people's walls and sending them messages. Superpoke is just poke. Fun wall is just wall. So I think the fear that we will suddenly have zombie-biting applications on Linkedin is pretty unfounded. I'm relatively confident that further API investigation will reveal this.
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