11 January 2008 | Trends | Oliver

Those who follow the social media space are well aware of the two “competing standards” for developing social networking applications. In May 2007, at the Facebook F8 event, Facebook launched its application platform and announced a slew of third party developers. By embracing the developer community, rather than taking MySpace’s cautionary approach of fretting over third party widgets, Facebook quickly captured the web’s attention and also accelerated the social network’s already runaway growth, contributing to 37% of Facebook’s growth since the platform was opened in May.

Not to be out done, Google announced its response to the Facebook application platform –OpenSocial in October 2007. This set of social networking API’s, defined by Google with “input” from its partners, was aimed at standardize social networking apps so that they can be run on more than one social network. Platform partners included almost every social network that wasn’t feeling the “Facebook Love”. In fact, Google announcement reminded me of the days when Microsoft ISV’s would put out press releases paying lip service to every new technology that came out of Redmond while taking a “wait-and-see” approach or simultaneously pursuing their own independent strategy.

A Better Social Network!
The continued success of Facebook, and the inability of OpenSocial to slow down Facebook’s momentum, clearly demonstrates that what the world needs now is a better social network, not a better social networking API! Despite some of predications made to the contrary, Facebook’s platform has become today’s social network of choice. In a way, Facebook’s success represents an evolutionary process in product design: MySpace looks like it was designed by high schoolers for high schoolers – Facebook was designed by college kids for (adult) college kids (and grads).

Facebook, OpenSocial and Content Providers
As a service provider to content providers, Grouptivity is about providing publishers with increased traffic through improved and widespread distribution. Facebook, with it’s 50 million plus users, is an ideal environment that can leverage (in concert with real-work networking) online content sharing tools and services (like Grouptivity) to reach an even wider audience. Look to see some interesting offerings from Grouptivity for social networks in the future.