News

The Great Google Strikes Again

Over the past few days, the internet has been abuzz with the news about Google’s upcoming foray (or perhaps more accurately: retry) into the world of social networking.  It has promised to build 2-way APIs for multiple networks that will change the way users transfer their social data on the internet by allowing multi-site access to a common platform.  This is an attempt to  isolate facebook as a closed platform while users enjoy the freedom of mobility between all other networks that come on-board with Google’s model.

As it was announced on Tuesday, Google had a lineup of nine rather lackluster parters on board for the launch: Orkut, Salesforce, LinkedIn, Ning, Hi5, Plaxo, Friendster, Viadeo and Oracle.  While the idea is amazing, it left many people wondering if it had any chance of success since everyone is on Myspace and facebook…how many people do you know on Hi5?  But today, the rumors became official and the stars aligned, bringing some real weight to the new OpenSocial platform.  MySpace, NewsGator, Bebo, and SixApart are now confirmed as a partners on the platform.

This is huge news: not only is MySpace the largest social network but Bebo brings in quite a few young professionals who are ‘too old’ for facebook but ‘too cool’ for MySpace, NewsGator brings the cross-platform information aggregation, and SixApart includes TypePad, LiveJournal, Vox, and MovableType.  This officially closes the gap between blogging, content hosting, and social networking.  This is the Holy Trinity of user-generated social media.  I am a diehard facebook user, but I have to say, they made a mistake walking away from this deal: they are the only major player not on board and i think it is going to cost them in the long-run.  This is the Open Social Graph that has been so long sought after and theorized by all of us ‘web 2.0′ people.

It sounds sort of like I am spreading the gospel, but I have a feeling that this is going to revolutionize the networking world.  Good job on Google’s part, releasing the dud list and letting it get kicked around for awhile before they let the cat out of the bag on the big guns!  Kind of like the nerd at school who lets the bullies push him around for a bit before he lets loose some intricate plan to get the upper hand.

Google has set itself up for a huge success and a massive push to diversify its business sources…now it just has to pull it off.

 UPDATE: (11/1 9:06pm)  Maybe facebook wasn’t courted for OpenSocial?  The jury is still out…

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