Facebook Opens Up, Licenses Platform: Social Graph Platform Wars are ON!

Hmm. Google / Open Social is gonna have some competition from Facebook.

Facebook just announced they are licensing the Facebook Platform to other social networking sites (likely including Bebo, who just launched their own Bebo platform modeled after FB).

more commentary from AllFacebook, InsideFacebook, CNet, others...

Get ready folks:

The Social Graph Platform Wars are now ON.

my rather insane visualization of this battle is here:

Comments

[dave mcclure]

just to clarify: the sizes certainly aren't exact (altho i do think they're somewhat representative of potential), and i'm sure i'm missing quite a number of players (MSFT, YHOO, AOL, Six Apart, Plaxo, others...).

that said, i was having fun putting it together and after about an hour of futzing around, i decided i should get back to work.

(please make comments on the Flickr photo, and i might eventually update to reflect a little more accurate situation. or not.)

[Patrick Chanezon]

Nice diagram Dave. I'll pin that on my (super) wall.
I would just have inverted the labels (I always preferred to play the rebels), but it's just a questions of point of view:-)

"Rebel Rebel, your face is a mess"
Bowie

Looking at their spec:
http://developers.facebook.com/specification.php
"If you'd like to license the Facebook Platform methods or tags for your social site, please contact the Facebook Platform team at platform@facebook.com"
Not really what I would call open.

Darth Chanezon
or P@ Kenobi... depending on the point of view:-)

[Phillip Rhodes]

Nice diagram, but you left off OpenQabal:

https://openqabal.dev.java.net/

OQ is based entirely on open standards and will allow for a completely decentralized, open, federated model of social networking. The project isn't complete yet, but when it's ready, we will be the best platform for truly open social networking.

[Ryan]

You should take a look at the post I wrote in October - Chapter 3.0: The Platform Wars

http://blog.deftlabs.com/2007/10/chapter-30-platform-wars.html

[Xavierv]

@Jeremiah: I don't think so since Facebook is bigger than Myspace here.

[ChrisSaad]

Hi Dave,

Nice diagram - but you left off www.dataportability.org.

Where every other app that is not a 'social network' can become social by employing existing open standards and using the web (rather than a proprietary API) as the platform.

[Jeremiah Owyang]

Are they sized correct by member numbers?