Comments on: OpenSocial Advertising for All!

By: Business News Research » The Birth of the OpenSocial Foundation - GigaOM

Business News Research » The Birth of the OpenSocial Foundation - GigaOM — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 01:40:25 +0000

[...] a page from the Mozilla Foundation by creating a nonprofit foundation to control and maintain the OpenSocial code, which allows developers to build applications that work on a variety of social networks. The [...]

By: The Birth of the OpenSocial Foundation - GigaOM

The Birth of the OpenSocial Foundation - GigaOM — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 18:15:26 +0000

By: Mark Mayhew

Mark Mayhew — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 09:49:02 +0000

Facebook should join OpenSocial soon after Mark Zuckerberg finishes countin’ all that MicroSoft money.

By: Somewhat Frank

Somewhat Frank — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 22:05:52 +0000

Poll: What do you think about Google's OpenSocial API?

This week the Web development community has been buzzing as details were released about an new widget API called Google OpenSocial. Google officially launched OpenSocial and provided this video to further explain its actions. I have been trying to get ...

By: Adam Martin {Fat Man}

Adam Martin {Fat Man} — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 15:22:15 +0000

Anne,

Glad to see more critique on how intrusive and plain creepy social advertising will be, Facesoft is watching you! It's going to be like having the mail man give you a summary of your opened mail before he hands it to you!

When did we expect everything for free? Where is the ad free model for a nominal subscription of say $1 per week? If it's service we value, we should at least be granted the option of not having our social stream read and interpreted by crawlers.

Widgets have so much more potential, I use the term 'appvertising' and talk of branded applications that provide value and service rather than launch flash ads that no one wants - brands should be seeing what they can do for the consumer not what they can shout at them about.

By: Ryan

Ryan — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 15:02:29 +0000

Here is a technical review of the OpenSocial release.

http://blog.deftlabs.com/2007/11/googles-opensocial-api-no-beef-yet.html

By: Anne Zelenka

Anne Zelenka — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 12:25:20 +0000

An insistence that any amount and type of advertising is good is equally naive as saying that all advertising is bad. Advertising can be intrusive and abusive even. The dangers of losing privacy in an era of social advertising might not be felt until it's too late.

Like Alexander, I'd like to see models besides advertising, ones that create enough value for users that they are willing to pay directly. That's not feasible or desirable for every situation or even most situations, but for certain services online it would be.

@Joseph: yes, the hype is a bit much. I hope also that the openness will continue.

By: Open Social API at Wiggler

Open Social API at Wiggler — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 09:27:38 +0000

[...] Open Social is Live! Update 2: Από ότι φαίνεται το MySpace θα μπεί και αυτό στον χωρό του Open [...]

By: n-blue

n-blue — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 09:02:41 +0000

Google (aka evil G) doing this is just for money, spread thier ads around, grab user info.
It’s will be good and bad for SN users.

By: The Mobile Web Tablet » Now we know what the address book in the Google Phone will contain

Fri, 02 Nov 2007 07:38:17 +0000

[...] social networking application that has remained basically unchanged since it first arrived. Adding OpenSocial to the Google Phone might bring some innovation to this application (which probably is amongst the [...]

By: Alexander van Elsas

Alexander van Elsas — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 06:38:00 +0000

@Don and @Anne, I would like to see some investors and entrepreneurs do some lateral thinking and get out of this web 2.0 advertisement trap. There is no value in it for the user. It has become the easy web 2.0 money/value maker. Providing free (ad based) services. But in the end it sucks as a business model because it is fuelled from the wrong side (not the user). And it is the main reason why most of these social networking sites are walled in the first place. If the business model changes to user value instead of network value we wouldn’t need walled gardens and OpenSocial would have been implemented long ago.

By: Anshu's Blog

Anshu's Blog — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 04:12:19 +0000

OpenSocial: The Internet is The Platform

Even before Google announced OpenSocial, many of us had talked discussed whether a site can be the platform or is the internet itself "the social networking platform". I had stated "It is my perhaps...

By: Don Jones

Don Jones — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 04:11:11 +0000

Funny thing, someone has to pay for social networking services - so the usual sadness that advertising or some other way of monetizing a service is naive. Last time I checked, venture capital firms weren’t in the charity business for all the social networking companies they’ve been funding.

By: Vaibhav Pandey-->Technofriends Team

Vaibhav Pandey-->Technofriends Team — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 04:01:49 +0000

OpenSocial will definitely be the next big thing. In my honest opinion, Facebook should now come out and say that “Yes we shall support Opensocial”.
Google has its own style of doing things.
Cheers
Vaibhav

By: Joseph Pally

Joseph Pally — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 03:44:10 +0000

Anne,

Hope Opensocial keeps the openness going forward (due to Myspace involvement).

In another 6 months, social network fever will go down - and it will be assumed to be a platform enabler much like TCP/IP or HTML.