The Social Networking Tug of War

All geeks kindly bear with me while I make sure everyone knows what this is all about. Now I am sure none of you are new to the world of social networking unless you arrived from outerspace minutes ago; and all of you must be aware of the slow drift of people from orkut/myspace to facebook.

But this article is not about documenting those facts. Its about something much more important. However before we go further more facts.

Google realised at some point in time that orkut was by all means way behind new kid on the block: facebook. The next Microsoft, as they are rightly called I believe, they came with an ingenious plan to turn the tide : OpenSocial. Though its deceptive name may make you believe its open source; its not. It just provides a common framework for all social networking sites to work upon.



Now this was exactly what the world of social networking needed. Exactly how many sites was the poor end user supposed to maintain his onlin presence on to reamin in touch with his friends.
The debate as to what was the optimum number eluded many social networking experts. Now we had a solution and one that worked in Google's favour.

While OpenSocial was aimed at sites not providing functionality like facebook; facebook itself which had its own proprietary protocol would be the one to loose out. Imagine if all social networking sites worked with one another and facebook was left alone. Surely everyone would desert it eventually since connectivity matters in the social sphere.

Facebook realized its demise was eminent with the arrival of OpenSocial and so they released their own framework. Obviously Mark Zuckerberg was no fool would not join the ranks of college dropouts who were a one hit wonder (and yes I am thinking of you Mr. Sabeer Bhatia).

Coming back to the issues at hand, we have two equal giants eying for control. So is this good?

Yes! consolidated competition is always good for the consumer and two is a very good number. Do not agree with me and you dont believe that would offer you enough variety? Take a look at the soft drink industry and I suppose you will have your answer.

Now I have just spent too much time without getting to the point. What excites me more about this is not the prospects of the social networking world but they way Google tackled their problem. It represents a significant change in the ideology of a monopoly in the software industry.

How? Remember how Microsoft chose to tackle their extremely poor share of their browser market when they enterd late? You might argue Google had no other option but if you take a look closely at the Redmond Giant's recent endeveours you will notice that it has realised the error of its ways.