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Redmond's Heavy Guns Go After OpenSocial 148

Posted by CmdrTaco 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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Redmond's Heavy Guns Go After OpenSocial More

Redmond's Heavy Guns Go After OpenSocial

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  • Big guns, eh? Bah. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Bananatree3 ( 872975 ) on Monday November 05, 2007 @09:15AM (#21240725)
    Guns ablazin', I'm SURE they could take on the entire Google fanbase.
    • Today Microsoft announced that it would be helping to make OpenSocial suceed in any way thet they can.
    • Google... Ready on the left! Ready on the Right! Ready on the firing line... Open, FIRE!

  • Microsoft employees bashing something non-MS? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ByOhTek ( 1181381 ) on Monday November 05, 2007 @09:15AM (#21240731) Journal
    <sarcasm>
    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.

  • What social networks are really about... (Score:5, Funny)

    by TofuMatt ( 1105351 ) on Monday November 05, 2007 @09:16AM (#21240755) Homepage

    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)

      by monkeyboythom ( 796957 ) on Monday November 05, 2007 @09:35AM (#21240925)

      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."

      • Re:What social networks are really about... (Score:4, Funny)

        by kebes ( 861706 ) on Monday November 05, 2007 @09:55AM (#21241115) Journal
        Clearly what we need is a Facebook group for "Get Facebook to support OpenSocial!"

        As we all know, when Facebook groups become big enough, they can move mountains... :)

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by rizzo420 ( 136707 )
          so a global group search on facebook and you'll see that there are 16 groups with "OpenSocial" in their name. they're all currently growing in size.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by acidrain ( 35064 )

        the Facebook crowd will care when they see a nifty new plug-in

        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

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by clonmult ( 586283 )
      Nope, you're absolutely right - its not fifty million stupid applications, its closer to 20 million.

      And at least 99.999% of them suck.
      • I recently deactivated my Facebook account, largely because of the flood of stupid applications and friends bugging you to add said stupid applications. Maybe if I spent an hour or more per day at Facebook I'd find them fun diversions, but as is they are annoying, annoying, annoying.

        Personally, I think this is just an attempt by Google to kill the entire social networking fad. Make them ALL as annoying as Facebook, and they'll be done.

        HBH

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by damaki ( 997243 ) *
      I am a vampire/wereworlf/FilthBook user on Facebook and without APIs, I'd starve/sing/mast****** to death, you insensitive clod!

  • fifty million Facebook developers (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mwvdlee ( 775178 ) on Monday November 05, 2007 @09:18AM (#21240765) Homepage

    fifty million Facebook developers "don't know what OpenSocial APIs are...and don't care."

    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)

      by MightyYar ( 622222 ) on Monday November 05, 2007 @09:21AM (#21240787)

      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.
      Yeah, that was a pretty retarded statement. Like saying that Linux is useless because Windows developers aren't interested in it. And 50 million? Uh, right...

      • 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)

          by DragonWriter ( 970822 ) on Monday November 05, 2007 @10:43AM (#21241659)

          Sorry, but in order for a social networking application to be useful, [i]lots of people have to be interested in it[/i]


          (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".

          You don't need a social networking application to connect to your friends whom you sit around with in the basement playing D&D.


          Certainly not while you are doing that; outside of that time, social networking functionality would be useful to just that kind of group, too.

          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? 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.

          • (1) OpenSocial isn't an application, its a set of technologies on which applications are built;

            Of course, but those applications as an aggregate require interest for any of them to be worthwhile.

            (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".

            Uhhh.... What? Sure, if you can find 50 million users outside of Facebook who are interested in OpenSocial, it might work. But I think it's pretty obvious that if 50 million Facebook users aren't going to switch over, there's not much of a market share left for OpenSocial, especially since people who are joining a social network for the first time will most likely join the one that most of their

            • I don't think you're reading what's being said here. OpenSocial isn't a social network like Facebook, and it's not meant to compete with or replace Facebook, or MySpace, or whatever social network is currently the "hip" thing. OpenSocial is a standard design that people who write applications for things like Facebook can use to allow their applications to be used all over the place. If Facebook, MySpace, etc. all included support for OpenSocial, and the developers used that to develop their applications (wi

              • I completely understand that if Facebook adopts OpenSocial, it will be able to interoperate with other applications. I also understand that if Facebook adopts OpenSocial, they have to share their ad revenue with other applications. And, I realize that OpenSocial doesn't really provide any new functionality that the Facebook API doesn't have, and only serves to open up the data to other social networking sites. And if Facebook doesn't use OpenSocial, Facebook data will not be accesible to users who aren't
                • Well, I'm assuming that Facebook is hosting their own ads, and not embedding them inside of widgets, in which case no, Facebook won't be sharing ad revenue. The only way this could hurt Facebook is it reduces the lock-in on developers who can freely distribute their widgets on all social networks that support OpenSocial, as opposed to having to develop versions for every network. I also don't know how much of a users data will actually be available when they aren't logged in. I'm assuming that you would nee
                  • So would we essentially be accomplishing the same thing if every other social networking site just started using the Facebook API?

                    • So would we essentially be accomplishing the same thing if every other social networking site just started using the Facebook API?
                      Yes, but that's slightly less appealing because it would be controlled by Facebook and thus Microsoft. Admittedly OpenSocial being backed by Google is somewhat suspect as well, but at least with that there's a call right from the outset to make it a standard API that's not owned by any particular social network.
                • Hmmm... ...ms just is chafing that we are NOT going to let them maximize value from investing in FaceBook...

                  http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=348151&cid=21219915 [slashdot.org]

                  http://www.touchgraph.com/ [touchgraph.com]

                  So, I think ms just doesn't want to look fracking stupid, which, for spending soooo much money on a social networking site when Google can just call in (more) guns from Open Social, Open Source and hit msoft with a full-one fusillade. Heck, maybe ms will need APIs just to perform battlefield triage on themselves.

                  Maybe

            • Of course, but those applications as an aggregate require interest for any of them to be worthwhile.

              No, they really don't, but because the fact that a social networking service supports the OpenSocial APIs does not mean that it can only be used via those APIs.

              All it requires for the OpenSocial apps to be useful is for them to connect to networks whose applications, in aggregate, including OpenSocial applications and all other means of using the underlying social data, are interesting to large numbers of use

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by jamesl ( 106902 )
      It's "fifty million Facebook users ... " not developers.

  • Facebook Developers (Score:5, Funny)

    by onion2k ( 203094 ) on Monday November 05, 2007 @09:22AM (#21240801) Homepage
    There aren't 50 million Facebook developers. It only seems that way because there's 50 million 'really awesome super dooper wall' applications.

  • Well respected? (Score:5, Funny)

    by EveryNickIsTaken ( 1054794 ) on Monday November 05, 2007 @09:23AM (#21240803)

    well-respected members of the Microsoft blogging community
    Oxymoron?

  • New Redmond Ploy (Score:5, Insightful)

    by segedunum ( 883035 ) on Monday November 05, 2007 @09:28AM (#21240865)
    It might be just me, but there seems to be an awful lot of blog posts coming from Redmond employees these days based on the new tactic of "If we get enough people banging on our blogs and rubbishing it enough, and then claim that we're the victims in all of this when someone raises a valid point, maybe people will believe that it's true!"
    • It's definitely the case - they do that for the PS3 vs Xbox 360 as well. Almost every gaming blog has people bashing the PS3 using Microsoft's corporate lines - "No games!!" "Expensive!!" "No BC!!" "Wii60!!" ... this is pure FUD, but it's taken on a life of it's own, so now people will do it on their own.

      Microsoft embraced blogging several years back as a viral marketing platform, and now are utilizing it to full effect.

  • Users != Developers (Score:5, Insightful)

    by downix ( 84795 ) on Monday November 05, 2007 @09:32AM (#21240897) Homepage
    Facebook does not have 50 million developers. It has 50 million users. Active developers are an incredibly small minority within that community.

    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)

      by kebes ( 861706 ) on Monday November 05, 2007 @09:47AM (#21241047) Journal
      Indeed, and the differentiation between users and developers is critical in this case. Basically, most users don't care about APIs and open standards and such (until, of course, the day they try to migrate all their perfectly tagged photos from one site to another... and discover they can't).

      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.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Tide ( 8490 )
        It doesn't sound to me that you're a Facebook Developer based on your comments. Since that's who is mostly affected here, like myself, you'd realized the FUD Google was spreading. An "Open" alliance that is governed only by Google and lacked inviting the industry leader. Please, I'm not blind. OpenSocial only offers a subset of everything Facebook was already doing, but Facebook provides deeper site integration than OpenSocial will for some time. Inbox, wall, navigation links, bug trackers, developer analyt

        • An "Open" alliance that is governed only by Google and lacked inviting the industry leader.


          MySpace was not only invited, they signed on, and by every account I've seen they are at least twice as big as any other social networking site.

          So I think your criticism is misplaced.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Tide ( 8490 )
            Facebook to my knowledge has the largest number of social application developers, being the industry leader in the "social web platform" space. I was never meaning to imply Myspace doesn't have the most traffic, and more to your point, they are only participating, not governing. Myspace is still planning its own platform, as is Friendster and others.

            My critism still remains that in not inviting Facebook (or Myspace, or anyone) to help *govern* the API, they clearly had not intended it to be "open". Standard

            • Facebook to my knowledge has the largest number of social application developers, being the industry leader in the "social web platform" space.

              But the number of developers doesn't make it the leader, the number of users does. Every social networking site is a social web platform, even if all the developers are internal to the site provider, and the important metric is the size of the audience, not the number of people currently trying to produce apps for that audience.

              I was never meaning to imply Myspace d

    • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

      by FreeUser ( 11483 )
      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?

      That sounds very much like a Redmond definition of developer to me.
    • If you read the article you'd know that the Slashdot editor got the summary wrong, because the nice big headline actually states "Fifty Million Facebook Users Don't Care About Google's OpenSocial APIs". Users, not developers.

      He further points out that the number of developers "is less than one/one hundredth of one percent of Facebook users".

      Nice sarcasm, by the way. Goes nicely with the whole "why bother to check the facts" ignorance thing.

  • Maybe Facebook has fifty million USERS. It's true most of them wouldn't care about Google's new API; most of them won't be writing a lick of code. They'll certainly be willing to incorporate pre-made widgets into their pages, though, which makes the question whether Google's API will produce neater widgets than Facebook's proprietary one.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Eivind ( 15695 )
      No they don't. They have 50 million -accounts- which completely fails to be the same thing.

      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.
      • Even the Weighted Companion Cube [facebook.com] has 16 accounts. What an attention whore! So much for being faithful...

        At least he's never threatened to stab me.
        =Smidge=
      • 50 million is a very low number. For reference; the UK population is 60 million. In 2006, 51% of the population had some kind of Internet connection. This gives around 30 million internet users in the UK, and every single one of them has email. The 50 million facebook accounts number probably equates to about this number of global facebook users.

        Think about that for a second. Email is the oldest social network on the Internet, and it has as many users in the UK as Facebook has in the world.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Eivind ( 15695 )
          It's much less than that actually. As I said, it's 50 million -accounts-

          I don't know, and neither does anyone except Facebook, but my guess would be that perhaps 10 million of those are current, active, nonduplicate accounts.

          That's a lot from a certain perspective offcourse, but it still means that something like 1% of all internet-users use Facebook, 99% don't.

  • Wow (Score:2, Insightful)

    by insllvn ( 994053 )
    "Dare Osabanjo because in his view OpenSocial while billed as a standardized widget platform for the Web, actually isn't." Did Microsoft really just criticize Google for creating a non-standardized standard? What?
  • ...and agree with TFA. OpenSocial will be nothing more than a Google version of Facebook, and I'm not sure I want that, or that any significant amount of people will switch over. And besides, the only thing worse than a 5% MS Facebook is a 100% Google Facebook.
    • I don't want Facebook either, so it is even.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by DragonWriter ( 970822 )

      OpenSocial will be nothing more than a Google version of Facebook, and I'm not sure I want that, or that any significant amount of people will switch over.

      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.

      • Well, I think TFA made a pretty good case that the OpenSocial API is functionally the equivalent of the Facebook API. Maybe OpenSocial is simply a standard (or whatever), but realistically it is nothing more than another networking service that is consumed by multiple web applications, rather than a networking service that is consumed by a single web application.

        • Well, I think TFA made a pretty good case that the OpenSocial API is functionally the equivalent of the Facebook API.

          That's not really in dispute.

          Maybe OpenSocial is simply a standard (or whatever), but realistically it is nothing more than another networking service that is consumed by multiple web applications, rather than a networking service that is consumed by a single web application.

          How is it a "networking service" at all?

  • Google has supposedly found a cure for Facebook addiction. Participants in a study responded 2 to 1 over placebo in favor of OpenSocial.

    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)

    by HangingChad ( 677530 ) on Monday November 05, 2007 @10:01AM (#21241199) Homepage

    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.

    • But isn't this how MS works anyway? Someone else comes up with idea, MS poo-poohs it, then comes out with their own version, which thanks to their market penetration is taken up by a large user base? It seems MS lets a lot of other people get a head start, so they can see how an application trends before committing larger resources to it. On the one hand brilliant -- on the other hand, pretty nefarious.

    • Re:MS talks, Google walks (Score:4, Insightful)

      by arkane1234 ( 457605 ) on Monday November 05, 2007 @10:59AM (#21241843) Journal
      And to go along with their usual naming convention they'll call it "Microsoft Social Network"... wait til it's an abysmal failure then rename it to "Microsoft Live Friends & Family" and integrate it into the Windows profile somehow.
  • Who would believe that Microsoft is denigrating a competing standard? What's next? Toyota comparing their trucks to others? Household cleansers claiming to work better than the leading brand?

    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)

    by mikemuch ( 870535 ) * on Monday November 05, 2007 @10:34AM (#21241555) Homepage
    I haven't seen the comment made anywhere that perhaps the real motivation for the bit OpenSocial announcement could be that Google lost the bidding war for a stake in Facebook. This could explain MS's lack of interest in creating a cross-SN API, though I can't picture them doing that anyway, except maybe as an option in their dev tools.

  • plogs, not blogs (Score:3, Interesting)

    by paiute ( 550198 ) on Monday November 05, 2007 @10:43AM (#21241653)
    When someone is paid to sit at work and comment on their web log about the competition, it is no longer a 'blog but a paid web log, or 'plog.

    • When someone is paid to sit at work and comment on their web log about the competition, it is no longer a 'blog but a paid web log, or 'plog.


      Also, when they are doing paid blogging about the competition, they are no longer developers, but instead marketing drones.
  • I'll link to my other comment [slashdot.org] on this issue.

    Basically, I'm still kind of bitter about Google releasing a standard that, well, doesn't seem much better than Facebook. For it to truly be open, you have to allow users, not just website admins, to choose other services than Google.

    I can connect with Gmail people from any email server, because they talk SMTP. I can connect with Google Talk people from any Jabber server. I cannot connect with OpenSocial/Orkut people from any other authentication/profile server th

  • Did people actually read the articles? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by gaindev ( 1114377 ) on Monday November 05, 2007 @10:51AM (#21241765)
    Did a few people actually read the articles before they commented? I think the two articles raised a few interesting points.



    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" :D

    • "OpenSocial should be seen as FREE APIs rather than "open" (which generally regarded as good, no evil) APIs."

      And THAT probably is what ms is REALLY after. The younger, next-gen developers (NGDs, anyone). For free. They basically are getting a gigantic pool of presumably promising developers for free. After all, what do these "developers" have in the way of skills or experience. Their "offerings" are their resumes.

      Why, I bet you ms this very minute has their Easy-Bake/Mix-Master DJ's in the board rooms spinn
  • Wow, is jg21 taking a jab at Dare Obasanjo by calling him Dare Osabanjo? Maybe it was just a typo, but I digress.
    Dare seems to present his thoughts in a well written manner and doesn't seem to be ranting, so I dismiss jg21's one liner to describe Dare's article as a cheap shot. I'm no fan of Microsoft but if Google can learn from Microsoft's developers (hint, hint, free secrets about Microsoft's strategy) to make Google's API better then why not. However Don Dodge's comments are exactly the kind of "Na-na-n

  • Sys-con hosting more FUD: remembering the past (Score:4, Informative)

    by merc ( 115854 ) <slashdot@upt.org> on Monday November 05, 2007 @12:20PM (#21243069) Homepage
    Consider the source folks, this is the same online rag that hosts Maureen O'Gara articles. For those that aren't familiar with "MoG" she a SCO shill with an extreme anti-IBM bias that stalked Groklaw's PJ, posted her personal information and other sorts of gossipy crap which SYS-CON happily published. MoG is also the last holdout that believes the SCO lies (and who is, coincidentally, owed money by SCO as is shown in the bankruptcy debtors list).

    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.
  • Microsoft is losing on the web. Microsoft is unable to compete. So what do they do? They whine.
  • Without even reading this, I can already tell the following;
    "Wonder Twin powers, activate!"
    [Microsoft] form of; Fear and Doubt
    [coalition of the willing partner to make it look like we've got a coalition here, for reasonable rates] You know, what he said. But I'm also the shape of Uncertainty -- but that is really vague.

    OK, I'm jumping the gun here ... this is just two guys on a blog. But this is pure Microsoft mentality; "If we don't have it, but it is something we want, there is something w
  • now ?

    When did that happen ? with a pathetic 2% share ?

    time to cancel my facebook account it seems.
  • most windows users don't know what the .net api's are, and don't care either. so is .net irrelevant ms?
  • Just curious. I was trying to understand what this OpenSocial was, so clicked through the links... ultimately ended up looking at some site called Orkut. joined some random group to see how it worked.

    And I saw a forum filled with spam. In fact 99% of the content was spam.

    I don't use myspace, et al... is this how all of them are?
  • Two Bloggers are heavy guns? Maybe you want to ask the boys over at Digital Research what it means to have the heavy guns come at you from Redmond. Writing snarky articles in a blog hardly counts.

  • How about reading the API? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Kristoph ( 242780 ) on Monday November 05, 2007 @05:59PM (#21247691)
    So, you know, before bagging out this person for being a Microsoft shill (which he may be, I don't know) did any poster bother reading the OpenSocial API spec? Because I did, in fact, read it and I have to say, its really very bad. I mean, it reads like some marketroids gathered up some stuff Orkut is doing into a binder (which itself did not have much forethought), did a deal with some partners, and threw it out there with the word 'Open' in the title for the GOOG fanboys.

    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.

    ]{

  • Only on slashdot would two blogs be considered "Redmond's Heavy Guns".
    Microsoft has literally *thousands* of bloggers. Two of those stating their own opinions on something (and explicitly say, "This is my own opinion, not necessarily my employers") doesn't constitute "Heavy Guns".
  • .. means they got scared.

    Typically ms keeps their mouth shut and even complements its comeptitors such as firefox.

    I think the move by google surprised them and nothing scares ms more than a standard api they can not control like java or even html.

  • I love my guns as much as any good right winger, but, to even compare Microsoft's FUD to some sort of an armed camp seems awefully ludicrous when the real guys with guns are fighting in Iraq.

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