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Redmond's Heavy Guns Go After OpenSocial
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Mon Nov 05, 2007 09:10 AM
from the rat-a-tat-tat dept.
from the rat-a-tat-tat dept.
jg21 writes "It is probably coincidental, but two responses to OpenSocial from well-respected members of the Microsoft blogging community have each in their own way come out against Google's OpenSocial initiative, Dare Osabanjo because in his view OpenSocial while billed as a standardized widget platform for the Web, actually isn't. And Don Dodge because his claim is that fifty million Facebook developers "don't know what OpenSocial APIs are...and don't care.""
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Battle Lines Being Drawn Over OpenSocial 63 comments
SkiifGeek writes "Microsoft employees have already openly criticized Google's OpenSocial initiative (recently discussed here), and now there's news that one of the first OpenSocial applications, emote by Plaxo, was hacked within 45 minutes of appearing on the Net (it was subsequently pulled while Plaxo looked into fixing the holes). Although coding errors can happen to anyone, leaving evidence of lax programming discipline when all it takes to view your code is 'View Source' is poor form. It seems that the battle lines have been drawn between Microsoft and Google through their social networking proxies, with Facebook getting ready to fire the next salvo in the social networking battle."
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Big guns, eh? Bah. (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Big guns, eh? Bah. (Score:5, Funny)
Hell, they don't really even know what a standard is.
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Re:Big guns, eh? Bah. (Score:5, Funny)
Sure they do, that's that thing they keep changing every time they release a new version of Office.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It's soooo much like the 1990s that I saw mention of "Web 3.0" a few days ago, as if the comical fluff that is Web 2.0 wasn't bad enough. I think it's time I get on the bandwagon. Know of many brain dead venture capitalists out there
Microsoft employees bashing something non-MS? (Score:5, Insightful)
Shocking! Shocking I say!
What is wrong with the world, this day in age, when a company's employees will come out and bash the competitors competing products?
</sarcasm>
This is about as surprising as Ballmer bashing Apple, Apple bashing MS or Google, [insert any other corporate rivalry here]. News it ain't.
Grammar Nazis: Yes, I am aware that "ain't" really isn't a word.
Re:Microsoft employees bashing something non-MS? (Score:5, Insightful)
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"Open" (Score:4, Insightful)
Its not about not following standards, its about not submitting work to standards body, and specifically, about not being "open" because the technology isn't submitted to a standards body. Osanbanjo writes:
Yeah, its the new Microsoft definition of "open": "open" means "submitted to a standards body".
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
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Re:Microsoft employees bashing something non-MS? (Score:5, Funny)
No, it's the Trebuchaise.
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What social networks are really about... (Score:5, Funny)
I agree. Who the fuck cares about APIs? It's not like people are joining Facebook just to add fifty million stupid applications to their profile.
Re:What social networks are really about... (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, I don't care that you don't care. In addition, the Facebook crowd does not care either. But I do, because less developer competition is a bonus for me.
However, the Facebook crowd will care when they see a nifty new plug-in or tool that allows them to have a social calendar robot(tm) or ad hoc open forum(tm) or anything else that will make their Facebook experience more pleasant, more useful, or just plain old stupid but with really interesting eye candy.
And by then, you'll care because you don't want to be left out of the "cool crowd."
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Re:What social networks are really about... (Score:4, Funny)
As we all know, when Facebook groups become big enough, they can move mountains...
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Many Facebook users are really sick of the apps on Facebook. I get 5 content-free messages every day that would require me to install some juvenile piece of shit just to confirm that I didn't care about it's content, and I'm thinking the mountain of stupid apps could be the death of Facebook. Considering Facebook's initial popularity was based on not being as stupid as Myspace.
Perhaps Google is late to the party on this one. We already have
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And at least 99.999% of them suck.
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fifty million Facebook developers (Score:5, Insightful)
Well yeah, if you're going to base the usefulness of something on how many Facebook developers know about it, pretty much nothing is useful.
Re:fifty million Facebook developers (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
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Sorry, but in order for a social networking application to be useful, [i]lots of people have to be interested in it[/i]. You don't need a social networking application to connect to your friends whom you sit around with in the basement playing D&D. You're not going to reconnect with old friends (which is what I use Facebook for) if none of your old friends use it.
So, the Linux vs. Windows analogy isn't really fitting...
Re:fifty million Facebook developers (Score:4, Interesting)
(1) OpenSocial isn't an application, its a set of technologies on which applications are built;
(2) Actually, you need lots of people involved in the social network, which serves as the "database" of the social networking application. They don't have to use the particular application, much less be interested in the particular set of APIs on which the application is built; and
(3) Lots of people can be not interested in something (the supposed 50 million Facebook "developers") and still have lots of other people interested in it. "Lots of people aren't interested in X" does not imply the falsity of "lots of people are interested in X".
Certainly not while you are doing that; outside of that time, social networking functionality would be useful to just that kind of group, too.
So? What does that have to do with OpenSocial APIs? Your friends don't have to use the OpenSocial APIs, or even applications built with them, for them to be part of the network you access if you use them. You seem to be confusing social networks with social networking applications and with social networking technologies and confusing developers with users.
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Facebook Developers (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Facebook Developers (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Facebook Developers (Score:4, Funny)
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Well respected? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Well respected? (Score:5, Funny)
Where did you get "oxy" from?
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New Redmond Ploy (Score:5, Insightful)
Users != Developers (Score:5, Insightful)
Or are you saying that Miss take-a-self-portrait-at-arms-length-on-her-cell-phone is a developer because she knows how to post a picture as her background?
Re:Users != Developers (Score:4, Insightful)
The developers are the ones who might care about APIs and open standards. Now, I'll admit that some casual developers of Facebook widgets don't care too much about portability and open standards. But, I would guess that many (most?) developers of social widgets do care about such things. As a developer, why would you want your work to be coupled to a single site, which is not under your control? Most programmers would prefer to have the ability to move their code from place to place, and for their widgets/applications to be accessible to as many people as possible (otherwise, why are they releasing it in the first place?).
So whereas users might not care about these things, I think many programmers/developers are going to be more interested in working on OpenSocial tools and widgets, rather than contributing to a walled garden that they have no control over. (E.g. Facebook can come up with a tightly-coupled widget that completely replaces your pet project.)
If the developers care, they could certainly shift the balance of power towards OpenSocial. Users may not care about APIs and open standards, but they certainly do care about awesome widgets, the ability to link with a large and growing social network, and (perhaps most importantly) the ability to migrate their current profile into this new network. If everyone except Facebook (for instance) is part of this OpenSocial network, then Facebook users will indeed be annoyed that they cannot interact with the cool toys everyone else is playing with.
Parent
Wow (Score:2, Insightful)
In other news... (Score:2)
All kidding aside, we've all heard these "killer app", "[insert popular toy] killer" stories before. I'm sure it has some advantages over Facebook in many respects. But give it a year or so and we'll see if this is the app that ends Facebook. Considering all the hype is coming from blogs of Google developers, I have to take this with a grain of salt.
MS talks, Google walks (Score:4, Interesting)
Sure MS employees are going to take shots at Google services. But even if they're not perfect, Google is getting the services out there and putting the tools out there. While MS blogs about it. I'm sure MS will eventually field some Windows-centric competitive product...just as soon as they get done blogging about how bad Google is.
Re:MS talks, Google walks (Score:4, Insightful)
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OpenSocial Hacked already (Score:3, Informative)
I'm sure we're all shocked, shocked! (Score:2)
This could lead to a calamity of Biblical proportions: Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies. Rivers and seas boiling. Forty years of darkness. Earthquakes, volcanoes. The dead rising from the grave. Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together - mass hysteria!
Is it now assumed Microsoft = Facebook? (Score:4, Insightful)
plogs, not blogs (Score:3, Interesting)
Did people actually read the articles? (Score:3, Interesting)
The one from Don Dodge pointed out the most important fact that Facebook's success is based on its users' loyalty to the service. Do they really care about applications? Most of them dont care that much. If one developer leaves, there will be plenty of others who will do same thing, even better.
The second article looks at OpenSocial from technical perspective. It compared the two set of APIs to see whether facebook's or opensocial is better technically. OpenSocial should be seen as FREE APIs rather than "open" (which generally regarded as good, no evil) APIs. These APIs are owned and administered by Google, which they can withdraw anytime they want as with Google Map APIs.
Having said that, it's still interesting to watch the battle bw facebook and "the new microsoft"
Sys-con hosting more FUD: remembering the past (Score:4, Informative)
At one time SYS-CON promised to get rid of MOG, right after a mass exodus by SYS-CON writers in protest over what was called a gross violation of professional ethics. Later in an interview for Free Software Magazine [freesoftwaremagazine.com], Fuat Kircaali, CEO of Sys-Con, stated he felt Maureen did nothing wrong. Today they still let her secretly write pro-SCO rubbish, and in some cases outright incorrect information under a pen name.
Anyone who consideres SYS-CON an authoritive source of IT information would be better off reading eweek or TheOnion for that matter. Sys-Con has some sort of agenda and are (at least in my opinion) serving interests other than Free or Open source software.
How about reading the API? (Score:3, Interesting)
I am usually a fan of GOOG API's but this is pure competitive play that is weak technically and has little or no merit beyond who is supporting it.
]{
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Some of these are held by people who have two or more accounts. Some are held by spammers, and a great many are held by people who at some point or other signed up out of curisoity, but haven't actually used the site even once the last month. These aren't "users" of the service.
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At least he's never threatened to stab me.
=Smidge=
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OpenSocial isn't a social networking website. If Google had a version of Facebook, I would guess it would be Orkut, which is Google's social networking website. But OpenSocial is a set of technologies that several social networking websites -- including MySpace, which has more users than Facebook -- are committed to supporting.
Re:Json again (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not sure what exactly your point with this is, but I'd like to contribute some interesting facts. First, JSON isn't a Google thing. In fact, it was created by a Yahoo employee (Douglas Crockford), and is an open standard which is available as RFC4627. Having worked with JSON in the past, it's a much simpler, and much lighter markup language than XML (yes, that's right, it's a markup language, nothing more, just like XML, and HTML). I'm not certain how google is using JSON in their API, but in my experience deciding to use JSON over XML is probably a smart idea, as JSON is much more compact, and much easier to write (a lot less typing) and can easily represent all the standard data constructs available in almost any language.
If you want to bash the design of Googles API versus Yahoos that's fine, but please don't confuse the issue by saying JSON is somehow more complicated than XML, as that couldn't be farther from the truth.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You mean like AJAX and the multiple frameworks that aren't owned by anyone is?
Yes, but you're still missing the point. It needs to be designed from the beginning for developing network based applications. That means it needs real graphics and animation capabilities. Sure you can kludge it in JavaScript and HTML by using 1 pixel by 1 pixel colored divs, but that's really really slow and terribly wasteful, not to mention a real pain in the butt to program. It would also be nice if it could integrate into the native OS to a certain extent (tray icons, in OS X have the menu across the