Mixi, the prominent social network in Japan, launches its OpenSocial support in beta today. This is the first major move Mixi has taken towards supporting an open platform approach. Choosing to take these initial steps by supporting OpenSocial means that Mixi is looking to become a part of a rather large community of social networking sites around the world.
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Earlier this week I had the opportunity to speak with Kevin Marks of Google about the current state of Friend Connect, OpenSocial, and the future of the social web. Friend Connect was initially seen as one of the methods for “out opening Facebook”. In other words Google was concerned about Facebook’s growing ownership of users’ identities on the web. While the initial steps were made for competitive purposes, OpenSocial has become part of a greater movement to simplify the models for sharing our social data around the web.
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A few months back, Yahoo! announced that it would be opening up the site’s services to developers in a significant way. This afternoon the company rolled out a big iteration which has a massive social component. The service has a bunch of features that developers can use to detect any individual web user’s “social presence”. So what are the new component of this open platform and what does it mean for developers?

What’s Being Offered?

First, let’s take a look at what exactly Yahoo! is offering as part of the Yahoo! Open Strategy (Y!OS) 1.0 platform launch:

• Yahoo! Social Platform – “The Yahoo! Social Platform (YSP) consists of a suite of REST-based social APIs from Yahoo! including: Profiles, Connections, Updates, Contacts and Status.” Sound familiar? It should. The service enables users to develop a new form of social application similar to Facebook applications or MySpace applications. From a technical standpoint the applications are much more similar to MySpace applications because they take advantage of OAuth and REST. They’ve also announced a PHP SDK that developers can use to start programming today.
• Yahoo! Query Language (YQL) – Remember FQL? If you don’t, it’s the language that developers can use to send SQL-like queries to Facebook instead of making standard API calls to retrieve user information. Yahoo! is releasing a very similar service but they are calling it the “command line version of Pipes.” Whatever they are calling it, this sounds to me a lot like FQL.
• Yahoo! Application Platform – Wait didn’t we just go over the Social Platform? Yes we did! The main purpose of the Application Platform in contrast to the Social Platform is that it provides a centralized distribution point for applications to Yahoo! users. Back in September I wrote that platforms are the new software distributors and this further supports my assertion. Applications will have canvas pages, landing pages, invitations, notifications, a chrome, updates, and a few other features.

Yahoo! Social Platform is an “Open” Facebook Connect Competitor

Facebook Connect appears to have the best odds of succeeding so far as they have had the most partners roll out sites for any company that we’ve seen so far. Honestly at this point much of the “success” will be determined by a PR battle since none of the technology has been rolled out except for Yahoo! which has now released what appears to be a terrific platform.

It’s clear that many of the features of the Yahoo! Social and Application platforms take cues from Facebook aside from the user interface which for now appears to be completely non-existent outside of the Yahoo! chrome. Just the other day I posted about John McCrea’s lessons from attending the User Experience Summit, which was make things look good (as well as a few other key components ).

Yahoo! has a solid chance at boosting their developers to the forefront with critical integration points which could in the future include a link to applications directly on the Yahoo! homepage, something any developer would die for. With so much potential, social application developers are now going to be pushed to their limits.

One additional interesting factoid about Yahoo’s new platforms is that they will be leveraging OAuth and OpenSocial, each open standards for the social web. At this point, Facebook is standing alone and while they still have substantial leverage, if Yahoo! can pull all the right strings, Facebook may be forced to comply. As the Facebook platform becomes more limiting, and social application developers are stretched thin, they are rapidly searching new opportunities for growth.

The Yahoo! platforms could very well be that next place they are looking for.

What Does This Mean for Businesses?

Your in the midst of planning the social media strategy for your company and you just learned about Yahoo!’s new Open Strategy platform. While you may not understand everything that it offers, it sounds a lot like Facebook Connect and now you are forced to take this into consideration when suggesting something to the boss. Or perhaps you are the boss but being an intelligent individual that takes all options into account, you are now considering Yahoo! as a distribution channel for your brand.

Well, the reality is that all of the things need to be taken into consideration. I wish I could say it’s more easy than that. The primary factors driving this decision should be:

• How large is your company? – If you are a large company, you should be able to come up with the funding to have a Facebook application, iPhone application, Android Application, MySpace application, Yahoo! application, and any other large platform application. Small businesses obviously can’t do that and that’s why they need to consider other factors.
• Who’s your target market? – In the U.S., the majority of Facebook users are still 18-25. That demographic begins to skew somewhat when you start looking at the other platforms. Considering the demographic biases of each platform is important.
• Ease of development – It’s easier to develop a Facebook application than an iPhone application. If you happen to have iPhone developers on staff though, it’s obviously a better decision to build on that platform. For those without resources, it’s clear that easier platforms will make it possible to make an application for less money.
• Other Options – Sometimes you may not have the budget at all and instead it would be best to figure out how to leverage the social features of these platforms at minimal cost. One option would be to integrate social features into your company’s website. For those with less resources it may be useful to examine all the other options out there.

It’s clear that the trend is toward an open web and any company standing in the way of that is not likely to survive in the long-run. Whatever your company decides to do, Yahoo! has just made your decisions just a little more complex.

Yahoo! Application Canvas Screenshot

Yahoo! Application Invite Screenshot

Today the OpenSocial participants jointly announced the launch of the OpenSocial Foundation. The organization’s purpose it to keep OpenSocial as a separate entity which is independent of ownership by any individual group. The current participants are hi5, Google, Flixster, MySpace and Yahoo! Today’s announced came with the launch of the OpenSocial Foundation website which appears to be simply a source of information.

Just yesterday we announced that hi5 had launched OpenSocial version 0.8 which includes a set of REST APIs. One commenter posted that they had tried out the new version of OpenSocial on hi5 and had substantial technical issues. I also highlighted that OpenSocial still has some catching up to do to compete with Facebook as their platform has become the top choice for developers on the social web.

MySpace is currently catching up to Facebook making them the leading implementer of OpenSocial. OpenSocial has high hopes and according to many developers that have build on top of the standard, it has made it much easier for them to port their applications across platforms. What used to be a “coalition of the willing” has rapidly become a tightly knit group of social web leaders.

For more information check out the OpenSocial Foundation site. The site includes a FAQ, the organization’s Bylaws and a number of other resources. Also be sure to check out the MySpace developer post regarding this announcement.

Today hi5 announced the release of the OpenSocial 0.8 standard which has been in beta for the past few weeks. According to the release, over 1,800 applications have been installed on the platform to date. The most significant change here? The launch of a RESTful API which enables developers to choose their development language rather than being forced into Javascript. This is a huge upgrade for the OpenSocial standard.

Is this a big announcement for OpenSocial? Not necessarily in terms of the standard’s reach but it definitely does imply substantial upgrades from a development perspective. As OpenSocial improves, the standard continues to face challenges in terms of adoption by developers. While the applications on MySpace, hi5 and other platforms appear to be growing rapidly, Facebook continues to dwarf the competition.

While that may not be the case indefinitely, it appears that developers have been pushed to their limits. Take the MySpace Data Availability initiative for instance. It is essentially a copycat of Facebook Connect but was first to launch and while it may be confusing, is supposedly completely functional. So far there has been no word of any large applications that have been launched with the service.

It’s not completely clear why this is the case but it appears that there is much more anticipation surrounding Facebook Connect. The announcement of this new version of OpenSocial may perhaps attract the same sort of response: a congratulatory pat on the back without comparable developer adoption. I could easily be wrong though.

Ali Partovi of iLike for instance has an enthusiastic comment in the press release, “I’m delighted that hi5 is the first Open Social container to release the 0.8 upgrade.” One can only be so excited about a new version of OpenSocial being released though. I think we’re all still waiting on version 1.0 to arrive. Hopefully my negative tone is not taken whole-heartedly.

I believe that this is a significant step for OpenSocial and for hi5. It will be interesting to see how the battle between OpenSocial and the Facebook platform plays out over the coming months.

When OpenSocial was announced last year by Google, it was paraded around as the system which was going to force Facebook to open up. While Google wasn’t necessarily putting those words in their press releases, insiders suggested that this was the goal. At first I called OpenSocial a “coalition of the willing” but ultimately there was a good shot at the standard gaining mass appeal. The company has now attracted MySpace, hi5, orkut and Friendster to join and as I previously thought, Bebo was part of it (Erick Schonfeld seems to think they aren’t yet part).

Whatever the case, it’s clear that the competing platforms to Facebook still haven’t attracted the same number of developers and haven’t experience the same blockbuster growth that Facebook continues to post. Facebook has around 37,000 applications and continues to grow rapidly. How many applications does OpenSocial have across all of their social networks? Only 4,500. That’s less than 15 percent the size of Facebook.

OpenSocial makes a lot of sense though and based on numbers that Techcrunch was provided, OpenSocial may be prepared to double in size before the end of September. One interesting that I found interesting was the chart that Erick Schonfeld included in hist post about OpenSocial growth (pictured below). There isn’t exactly the hockey stick growth that one would hope for. Instead, the only growth that is being provided is by expanding onto new networks.

Contrast that with Facebook where they maintain one platform yet continue to post continuous growth. I’ll be interested to see if OpenSocial can find their way on to networks that are posting spectacular growth. One company not included in the chart is imeem, who continues to post growth but did not launch with “Google’s approval”. I’m not sure why that’s required to be included in the chart but somebody definitely thought imeem wasn’t important enough to display!

It will be interesting to see if OpenSocial can eventually become the defacto standard for social applications.

Google has announced that seven new social networks in China have been added to the OpenSocial standard: 51.com, 51wan.com, Douban.com, Hainei.com, Tianji.com, Xiaonei.com and YiQi.com. These are all large social networks, one of which, Xiaonei.com, appears to be a direct rip off of Facebook. The company also recently raised $430 million making it better funded then Facebook itself.

I would imagine that any hopes of Facebook joining the OpenSocial movement have been eliminated for the time being with Xiaonei being announced as one of the large partners. As OpenSocial continues to expand its reach, the battle between the Facebook platform and OpenSocial continues. While most developers building on Facebook have been focused on the impending platform changes, OpenSocial developers have been hard at work trying to extend their reach with the launch of each new supporting platform.

OpenSocial has been extremely successful with gaining momentum recently announcing that MyAOL would be supporting OpenSocial and that more AOL products will also support the standard in the near future. If there is a lesson to be learned here, I’d say that Facebook needs to have a platform evangelist that also goes and pitches their platform to other sites. They are ultimately losing the battle to OpenSocial when it comes to platform adoption.

There has been little discussion surrounding yesterday’s Facebook announcement of fbOpen, the open-source version of the Facebook platform. Many have speculated about the intention of fbOpen and have boiled it down to a response to Google’s OpenSocial initiative. It is difficult to predict what will happen now that the platform has been open-sourced but it appears that Facebook has moved beyond licensing the platform and is instead making it a free-for-all so that developers can have their application run on other websites.

To me, Facebook’s release of their open-source platform is also an acknowledgment that the world does not just exist in blue and white (Facebook’s colors). So if Facebook knows that there is a world beyond their borders, why don’t they just support the OpenSocial initiative? Facebook claims that it’s because of privacy reasons but there has to be something beyond privacy that is really a concern for them.

Mike Arrington seems to think that it is a last ditch effort by Facebook to become the defacto standard of the social web. Unfortunately for Facebook I think it is a losing battle. At this point I’d say that the majority of users have picked their social network of choice and will use one site most often. Additionally, Facebook selected a somewhat restrictive license as Matt Asay points out.

As I wrote this morning though, all of this is ultimately a stupid, drawn-out game of chess (or poker). I wrote, “The reality is that Facebook will find that no matter how much money they have in the bank, there is no way that they can innovate faster than the overall market.” Facebook shouldn’t try to out smart Google and others by participating in their game.

Instead Facebook should simply open up and move on to the real issue at hand: figuring out a way to make money on social networks. After all is said and done we’ll all be singing O.A.R.’s “That Was a Crazy Game of Poker.”

Last week I spoke with Patrick Chanezon, evangelist for OpenSocial at Google. He speaks frequently at events around the country to educate people about how to take advantage of OpenSocial and a few of Google’s other products. I spoke with Patrick about the recent rifts between Facebook and Google, the future of monetizing OpenSocial applications and a number of other things.

While Patrick couldn’t speak about Google’s intention in providing monetization opportunities for OpenSocial applications, it is expected that Google will provide their own monetization solutions for OpenSocial apps. During our conversation Patrick discusses the benefits of Google Friend Connect and OpenSocial and addresses some criticism which has arisen over the new standard.

If you want to learn more about the OpenSocial program and where it is headed listen to our podcast. Also here is one of Patrick’s recent presentations on OpenSocial and Google’s various APIs.

OpenSocial developers have just gained access to a whole new platform: iGoogle. iGoogle is the startpage for millions of users across the web. While it isn’t as robust as Facebook, the ability to distribute your application through more channels is always a good thing. The applications also include a canvas view that provides more space for applications in contrast to the standard widget-sized currently provided.

The canvas feature is a drastic change for start pages overall as widgets have become the standard. For me this means that we are witnessing the convergence of social applications as widgets. Once two distinct entities, widgets and social applications had separate roles. Now, widgets and social applications are rapidly becoming more ubiquitous and distribution channels are becoming more streamlined.

This means that developers can now reach more people with less effort. The only problem remaining is that lack of viral channels on iGoogle. A while back I contacted Tariq Krim, CEO of Netvibes, to suggest that they add social features to their startpage. At the time he didn’t understand my suggestion (could have been lost in translation) but in a matter of months, Netvibes enabled the sharing of startpage widgets across their platform.

Erick Schonfeld suggests that iGoogle may slowly become its own social network. That’s due to today’s addition of friend updates to the iGoogle homepage. The web is rapidly becoming more social and while all of these standards and features are a complete mess, soon enough much of this will hopefully become more straightforward and slowly we will see the centralization of social identity management on the web. For now, developers have another platform to play with. Check out the video below to learn more.