An Open Facebook API vs Google OpenSocial
Probably about 5 months ago I had a conversation with someone at Facebook about licensing their API. — The beauty of Facebook, as opposed to Myspace and other social networks is that the people on there are for the most part who they say they are …
Context & Ripple Effects
Google's Open Social announcement landed three days before this post, pitching a common container for social apps across many networks; our own read-through argued it worked as much as a coalition against Facebook as a specification, and the Guardian's pickup ran under a 'more like hype than substance' banner. Into that skepticism steps Mark Cuban with the counter-frame: the question is not which API is more open.
Cuban says he raised licensing Facebook's API with someone at the company about five months ago, when the platform Zuckerberg had yet to deliver was still an open question — so the idea of Facebook opening up predates both OpenSocial and its launch-week politics. His substantive claim is that Facebook's real advantage over Myspace is identity: its members are, for the most part, who they say they are. That turns the platform fight into a fight over who holds the trusted graph, not who signs the most partners.
First-order effects
- The post reframes the week-old OpenSocial debate around identity quality: if Facebook's users are verifiably themselves, apps built on its graph start from a trust position that container-portable OpenSocial apps cannot automatically claim.
- Facebook's API licensing question — which Cuban says he put to the company months ago — stops being hypothetical now that Google has rallied outside social networks behind a rival container.
Second-order effects
- Networks lining up with OpenSocial, Myspace included, must answer the identity objection or concede that portability structurally favors whichever network's profiles are already trusted.
- Developers of the young social-app market now choose between writing once for many smaller OpenSocial containers or going deep against Facebook's single authenticated audience, splitting effort along API lines.
Third-order effects
- If identity authenticity is the moat, platform consolidation follows whoever controls verified profiles, and 'open' specifications become distribution tactics rather than ends in themselves — the reading the Guardian's skepticism points toward.
- Standardized containers tend to commoditize the app layer, pushing value down to the owner of the underlying social graph.
The trend: Social platforms are shifting their competition from features to API governance, with identity trust as the asset likely to decide which open standard wins.