Interesting Stats on OpenSocial Networks and Facebook

Some interesting stats and info in a post from Read/Write Web called OpenSocial and Facebook Stats from Rapleaf:

Rapleaf gathered data on users of MySpace, LinkedIn, Friendster, Plaxo, and Hi5 – five social networks on the OpenSocial platform – and also gathered data on Facebook users. Some highlights, followed by full details below:

• The greatest overlap between OpenSocial container sites exists between Myspace and Hi5, in which 43% of Hi5 users also use Myspace.
• Facebook users are 63% female and 36% male whereas the sites integrated with the OpenSocial platform are 61% female and 38% male.
• 52% of Facebook users are 18-25, whereas 40% of the users are 18-25 for the five container sites on the OpenSocial platform.
• Facebook users tend to use 2.9 major social networking sites on average whereas users of OpenSocial container sites tend to use 2.7 major social networking sites.

Read more here:
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/opensocial_and_facebook_statistics.php

Will Facebook now be forced to join OpenSocial?

More hoopla on the Google OpenSocial announcement: Checkmate? MySpace, Bebo and SixApart To Join Google OpenSocial (confirmed). Pretty good info and the article pretty much ends with this post’s title “Will Facebook now be forced to join OpenSocial?”. After reading the complete article, I had to wonder myself – here’s a clip from the TechCrunch article to get you started:

Google may have just come out of nowhere and checkmated Facebook in the social networking power struggle.


MySpace and Six Apart will announce that they are joining Google’s OpenSocial initiative. Silicon Alley Insider reported the MySpace rumor earlier today. We’ve confirmed that from an independent source, as well as the fact that Six Apart is joining. Per the update below, Google has also confirmed Bebo is joining.


Google will be making an announcement today. MySpace and Six Apart join Orkut, Salesforce, LinkedIn, Ning, Hi5, Plaxo, Friendster, Viadeo and Oracle as announced Google partners. No word on whether MySpace will continue with efforts to complete its own recently announced platform, but the answer is probably yes. They are likely to simply do both (Update: see below).


Suddenly, within just the last couple of days, the entire social networking world has announced that they are ganging up to take on Facebook, and Google is their Quarterback in the big game.


Read more here:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/11/01/confirmed-myspace-to-join-google-opensocial/

I liked this piece because it made a good case for OpenSocial and left me wondering what the next few months will bring. There’s no use linking to related articles at this point as new commentary is popping up every minute and updates on the OpenSocial front keep coming. I’m sure we can look forward to more announcements and interesting changes on this and related subjects.

Open Web APIs, Google’s Open Social and you

Big buzz abounds as Google launches it’s new Open Web API called Open Social. Marc Andreessen has a nice write up on the subject: Open Social: a new universe of social applications all over the web. Here’s a snip:

My company, Ning, is participating in this week’s launch of a new open web API called Open Social, which is being spearheaded by Google and joined by a wide range of partners including Google’s own Orkut, LinkedIn, Hi5, Friendster, Salesforce.com, Oracle, iLike, Flixster, RockYou, and Slide.

In a nutshell, Open Social is an open web API that can be supported by two kinds of developers:

• “Containers” — social networking systems like Ning, Orkut, LinkedIn, Hi5, and Friendster, and…
• “Apps” — applications that want to be embedded within containers — for example, the kinds of applications built by iLike, Flixster, Rockyou, and Slide.

Read more here:
http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/10/open-social-a-n.html

And here’s a clip from a related post by Michelle Murrain over at ZenOfNPTech:

OpenSocial is a set of APIs. It’s aimed primarily at developers. Google has a number of partners, including social network sites like LinkedIn, Friendster and Ning, as well as Salesforce, which does have very interesting implications given the increasing use of Salesforce in the nonprofit sector.

OpenSocial is a set of APIs that handle three different kinds of user data: profiles, social graph (who your friends are) and activities (the stuff of the Facebook news feeds.)  And the language of these APIs are standard HTML and Javascript. Any application written for OpenSocial will work on any partner social network – any OpenSocial “container”. That means developers need only write an app once, and it can get used on any of the networks involved, like Orkut and LinkedIn. Basically, if the more social network sites that adopt OpenSocial, the more open the whole thing gets.

Read more here:
http://www.zenofnptech.org/2007/11/what-opensocial-means.html

Some related reading:

• OpenSocial doesn’t knock down walls
• Google’s Open Social API – Googlified
• Google OpenSocial will (hopefully) make social apps more relevant
• OpenSocial, Google’s Open Answer to Facebook « GigaOM
• Google OpenSocial – Let’s Discuss
• Open Social: a new universe of social applications all over the web
• The long awaited “Facebook killer” from Google is here
• What’s “Open Social” All About
• Why OpenSocial Is so Exciting