Facebook vs Open Social

Facebook vs. OpenSocial By: Jawad Shuaib

What is OpenSocial?
Google’s Response to Facebook Developer Platform
Write Once, Run Anywhere
Google Widgets on Steroids
Released too Early
Email: Jawad.php@gmail.com

Social Networks that support OpenSocial Email: Jawad.php@gmail.com

What does it look like? Email: Jawad.php@gmail.com

Market Analysis Email: Jawad.php@gmail.com

Market Size and Competition
Ideally speaking, OpenSocial has a market potential for 250 million users as opposed to 64 million active users on Facebook
15,000 Applications on Facebook. Difficult to rapidly grow user base due to a saturated market
Most existing Google Widgets can run on OpenSocial. Results? Difficult to rapidly grow user base due to existing competition

Business & Marketing
Facebook applications leverage the social graph but lack the ability to scale to other networks. OpenSocial can scale, but the applications must be “generic”
Applications more viral on Facebook (i.e. support for email invites and better news feed)
OpenSocial profile box will likely support advertising
More applications won’t persuade users to switch from one network to another

What’s your target market? Email: Jawad.php@gmail.com

Technical Differences
Facebook requires proprietary languages (FBML, FQL, FBJS). Google requires XML and JavaScript
Google provides an IDE (aka Google Gadget Editor)
Google hosts applications for free. Facebook doesn’t

Language Support
Facebook API
FBML
FQL
FBJS
Partial support for AJAX
Backend languages like PHP, Java, .NET on Canvas
OpenSocial API
XHTML/XML
JavaScript
Full Support for AJAX
Backend languages like PHP, Java, .NET on Canvas

Developer Environment Email: Jawad.php@gmail.com

Facebook: Email: Jawad.php@gmail.com

OpenSocial: Email: Jawad.php@gmail.com

Conclusion Email: Jawad.php@gmail.com

Conclusion
The choice of your platform should depend on demographic
OpenSocial is modeled after Facebook. So if you’ve built a Facebook application before, it is relatively easy to learn OpenSocial
“ Write Once, Run Anywhere” is not exactly true. An Orkut specific OpenSocial app. Might not necessairly run on Hi5

Conclusion
Generic applications will do better on OpenSocial in terms of scalability. Applications that take advantage of Facebook’s social graph will have a difficult time scaling
Don’t make your OpenSocial applications too generic, because they probably already exist.
If Bebo supported both OpenSocial and FBML. I would develop using FBML. OpenSocial is buggy.

Find me on Facebook 
Jawad Shuaib
[email_address]
http://www.j4wad.com

References & Resources
http://code.google.com/apis/opensocial/
http://groups.google.com/group/opensocial
http://www.hi5networks.com/developer/
Bit5media.com
xkcd.com for comics

http://www.pulpgaming.com	1049
http://jsalvachua.blogspot.com	219
http://www.slideshare.net	218
http://blog.balfes.net	68
http://shuzak.com	57
http://jawadonweb.com	39
http://nct.teamlab.com	31
http://www.shuzak.com	20
http://www.nieleyde.org	20
http://localhost	10
http://jsalvachua.blogspot.fr	9
http://jsalvachua.blogspot.mx	8
http://jsalvachua.blogspot.com.es	5
http://jsalvachua.blogspot.co.uk	4
http://comunidadsogeti.ning.com	3
http://paper.li	3
http://jsalvachua.blogspot.de	3
http://owengeronimo.wordpress.com	3
http://jsalvachua.blogspot.it	2
http://jsalvachua.blogspot.pt	2
http://jsalvachua.blogspot.ca	2
http://jsalvachua.blogspot.se	1
http://static.slidesharecdn.com	1
http://vcasmo.com	1
http://universodeletrascohibidas.blogspot.com	1
http://www.hanrss.com	1
http://facereviews.com	1
http://www.naymz.com	1
http://74.125.39.104	1
http://web02exercise.wikispaces.com	1
http://www.slideshow.com	1
http://jsalvachua.blogspot.com.ar	1

Facebook vs Open Social

by jawadshuaib on Feb 05, 2008

Accessibility

Categories

Tags

Upload Details

Usage Rights

32 Embeds 1,786

Statistics

Facebook vs Open Social — Presentation Transcript