October 31st 2007
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October 31st 2007
Details about Google’s plans for the social networking space are emerging (at last). It is called OpenSocial (the url will apparently go live later today after the announcement) and Om Malik just published a post in which he reveals that the initiative is “a set of common APIs for building social applications on the web. These common APIs mean that developers only have to learn once in order to start building social applications for multiple websites, and any website will be able to implement OpenSocial and host social applications.” That is interesting. It turns out I flipped past a TechCrunch post that gave some more info about this initiative the other day.
As I understand this plan, Google is releasing a bunch of APIs, probably initially focussed on Orkut, to be rolled out across most, if not all, of Google’s properties. This would result in a kind of social network/interactive layer over these sites and services. Developers would be able to develop apps based on these APIs, presumably for distribution across the Google network and use on Google’s sites. This sounds like an open version of Facebook’s Platform and we can apparently expect to see some of the same apps as we see on Facebook mainly because many of the developers for this new “platform” are the same ones working on Facebook apps (sorry Ivo!).
According to TechCrunch (Note: Maka-Maka is apparently the code name for what we now know as OpenSocial):
That’s where the bigger plan for Maka-Maka comes into play. Maka-Maka is very strategic for Google. Responsibility for it goes all the way up to Jeff Huber, the VP of engineering in charge of all of Google’s apps. Huber is on record as saying that the way Google plans to compete is by using the Web as the platform instead of trying to lock developers into Google’s own platform. One way it will do that from the start is by creating two-way APIs so that any app created for Google can be taken to other Websites. (Whether this will extend to actual user profile data within Orkut or elsewhere inside Google remains to be seen because of privacy issues, but the apps themselves will be portable). And data from other social sites will be able to be imported into Google’s social apps as well.
There are going to be some privacy concerns about Google’s plans though.
The bigger vision is to combine all of Google’s apps and services through Maka-Maka. Google already has so much data on you, depending on how many Google apps you already use. It just needs to bring everything together. Your contacts are in Gmail. Your feeds are in Google Reader. Your IM buddy list is in Gtalk. Your upcoming events are in Google Calendar. Your widgets are in iGoogle. And don’t forget about your search history. Overtime, Google will connect all of these together in different ways, along with data about you from other social services across the Web, and give developers access to the social layer tying all of these apps together underneath. The real killer app for Google is not to turn Orkut into a Facebook clone. It is to turn every Google app into a social application without you even noticing that you’ve joined yet another social network.
I am not sure how this will really change the current status quo as far as Google having access to all of its users information and I think the big thing will be whether these developers will gain access to that aggregated data. I see problems ahead if they will gain access to that data. I kinda trust Google but I am not that sure about all these developers who I just don’t “know”.
There are a couple things about OpenSocial which I think developers will really like. For one thing developers will be writing their apps in javascript and html rather than some new programming language. The apps are meant to be portable and the whole system is designed for maximum flexibility. Rather than requiring developers to develop for Facebook’s closed system, developers will basically be adding a layer of social functionality to Google’s existing apps (although the difference between the two platforms on this front is a matter of degree). Facebook has been touted as the operating system of the Web. This move puts that into perspective. Google has a much wider reach than Facebook does and if any Google app could become an extension of your social network it makes Facebook look rather quaint by comparison.
What Google is not doing is creating a new social network. There are a number of host networks which include Orkut (of course), LinkedIn and Plaxo (oh yeah!). Talk about giving Facebook the finger. Leaving the privacy issues aside and the possibility of being inundated with more Facebook style vampire/zombie/pirate/ninja application invites, I think this is going to be a new beginning for a new paradigm of the social web.
The privacy issue is a big concern and we will have to see how this is managed. As concerned as some people are about Microsoft having access to Facebook data (whether that will happen or not), the data Google has is potentially far more valuable and invasive so I would want to see some substantial measures in place to protect my data from anyone I don’t explicitly grant access to (and even there I would want my data used for specific purposes that I authorise).
On the whole, though, I am pretty excited about this. I have been talking about how much I like Plaxo and Orkut for a couple weeks now and to see that they (along with LinkedIn which I also use) will be initial hosts for OpenSocial … well, that just gives me big warm fuzzies.
I bet Microsoft is feeling a little silly right now (or they should be).
Technorati Tags:
facebook, google, open standards, opensocial, orkut, plaxo, linkedin, web operating system, apis, api
October 30th 2007
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October 29th 2007
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October 29th 2007
iCommons, in conjunction with ITWeb and Mail & Guardian are presenting a series of TED-style talks called Innovation Series, starting next month:
The Innovation Series is a series of events with influential speakers from around the world who have had a significant influence on the world of the Internet. On Tuesday, 13 November, we launch The Innovation Series with a talk by Jimmy Wales, Founder of Wikipedia, who was named by Time Magazine last year as one of the top most influential people in the world and by Forbes magazine as twelfth in its first annual The Web Celebs 25.
According to Time, Wales, 39, is a former options trader who in 1999 set out to reinvent the encyclopedia for the Internet age—free, up-to-date and available to all. He started the way most encyclopedists start, by commissioning articles from experts and subjecting them to peer review. After 18 months, he had a pitiful 12 entries; at that rate, it would take a few millenniums to equal Encyclopaedia Britannica. So Wales created a free-form companion site based on a little-known software program called a wiki (the Hawaiian term means quick) that makes it easy—with the edit this page button—to enter and track changes to Web pages. The effect was explosive. That simple button turned readers into contributors and contributors into evangelists. Wikipedia now has more than a million articles in English, nearly 10 times as many as in Britannica. That number nearly doubles each year. And most extraordinarily, the site has not been defaced by vandals or hijacked by zealots. Or more precisely, it is vandalized every day but is usually repaired within minutes by any one of the millions of users who are motivated to protect and nurture the site.
Wales will talk about Wikipedia and the launch of the South African Wikipedias that will move us one step closer to Wales greatest goal: to create and distribute a free encyclopedia of the highest possible quality to every single person on the planet in their own language. He will also talk about his latest venture, Wikia, which aims take the powerful principles that have informed Wikipedia’s success and apply these to create potentially profitable business models. It’s a bold step which has captured the attention of pioneers within both the online and corporate worlds.
The launch of Wikipedia Academies here in South Africa is going to be pretty exciting in its own right and the iCommons team have been in talks with CIDA City Campus, Jimmy Wales and others. If ever there was an example of an initiative to help uplift and empower our communities, this is it and it has been quite something to watch unfold. As Heather points out in her excellent and passionate post, the R500 admission to the Innovation Series will go towards the Wikipedia Academies. It turns out I can bring a guest to the cocktail party and if my beautiful (and very pregnant) wife is not feeling up to it, I may have a seat available … you may just have to do something charitable for the Commons … 
(Image: Picture of Jimmy Wales (above) by Chrys on flickr.com, under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 2.0 licence.)
Technorati Tags:
jimmy wales, wales, innovation series, icommons, wikipedia, wikipedia academies
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