Loading ...I was beginning to wonder what had happened to Google’s fight back against Facebook. OpenSocial kick started everything with great fanfare, but after everyone had had a chance to reflect upon it, it appeared as though Google had been hitting back at Facebook in entirely the wrong fashion. Nobody goes to social networks for third party apps (excluding the developers on the end of high-flying VideEgg accounts). And, up until last week, everything had fallen very quiet on the OpenSocial front.
Image courtesy of Flickr user Danny Sullivan
Social (Search) Graph API, the second stab at Facebook, is closer to the left-hook that Google wanted to throw in the first round. However, because they’d already made a misjudged move with OpenSocial, Social Graph API feels like a pretty desperate, second chance move to me, and I’m sure Nick O’Neill feels the same way. Google tackled the wrong problem with OpenSocial, they chose an inappropriate name for what is essentially a ‘universal widget wrapper’, and they should have just skipped the widget game entirely, saving all the momentum for Social Graph API. Relationships are the important part, not the trivial applications.
Image courtesy of Flickr user Celebdu
Excluding that strategic issue, Social Graph API is still lacking in so many areas, the biggest of which is a real killer; mainstream users don’t use blogging meta friend systems (XFN & FOAF) to build friend connections, and they probably never will. Why? Because they’re just too techie. Come to think of it, I never read about anyone using those friend systems, and I read blogs about XHTML!
XFN™ (XHTML Friends Network) is a simple way to represent human relationships using hyperlinks. In recent years, blogs and blogrolls have become the fastest growing area of the Web. XFN enables web authors to indicate their relationship(s) to the people in their blogrolls simply by adding a ‘rel’ attribute to their tags
This doesn’t mean to say the developers behind Social Graph API, XFN, and FOAF are doing bad things. I think they’re working towards a great goal, and they all know far more about the Web than I ever will. But because of the first move with OpenSocial, and now the ‘Social Graph’ moniker, Social Graph API just feels too much like Google vs. Facebook take two, rather than the, ‘let’s free social data on the Web!’, which Tim O’Reilly is so eager for. If the Social Graph API had just been announced by the Data Portability Group, well, that would be a different matter entirely.
I agree with your take and appreciate the good summation (and yes, this was my first time hearing about meta systems like XFN & FOAF).
I took O’Reilly’s view when OpenSocial came out and didn’t understand the wide coverage by all the news sites. But maybe I should give Google the benefit of the doubt with the Social Graph API. Although, as you noted, it smacks more of “we want a part of this” than of actual internet altruism.
Guess we’ll see…
Samuel, I’m not suprised it’s the first time you’ve heard them! I only know about XFN et al because of WordPress. Maybe we should all be checking the source code on each site we visit from now on?!
I’d be interesting in hearing what the Data Portability guys have to say about Social Graph API. I was actually expecting them to make an announcement along these lines. It’s funny though, the only ‘Social Graph API’ which would actually hold much value for me would be an official Facebook Social Graph API, because that’s where everyone is!