Social Operating System, WTF?
Yes you heard it right, Social Operating System. Let me explain.
In May Facebook organized its F8 conference in San Francisco, attended by around 800 developers. Mark Zuckerberg (the 23 year old CEO ) mentioned that today’s social networks are closed environments and Facebook wants to end it.
End, they certainly did. FaceBook launched a very comprehensive API program for 3rd party developers and services. Typically services expose high level APIs to get access to user data and preferences. 3rd parties can write to those APIs and extract data for their services.
For example a service like Plaxo 3.0 accesses APIs from GMail, Yahoo and LinkedIn to collect user information to offer integrated contacts and calendar management (check out the video). However one cannot use Plaxo’s integrated contacts or Calendar from Google, Yahoo or LinkedIn. Integrations are typically one way and offer some form of integrated experience. However there are very few examples of bi-directional deep integrations. Such deep integration would offer unparalleled experience to the users and not to mention the stickiness / loyalty it brings to the table.
Facebook with its recent offering has delivered this amazing bi-directional deep integration. 3rd parties have much needed flexibility to participate within Facebook’s social ecosystem. This prominent presence allows ecosystems to overlap and derive additional value.
Take Hotlists for example: James Hong and team recently enabled their StylePix application with Facebook, which allows users to select media reflecting their personality and preferences. Independently StylePix was a decent service, but missed presence in a big social ecosystem. Users had to implement widgets on their profiles to reflect this data. However the Facebook integration has given them a unique edge as they can now play within the Facebook ecosystem. Users can now place their styles on their profile and connect with other user’s with similar interests.
Such open ecosystem play clearly positions Facebook as a operating system of sorts, where 3rd party applications can integrate to allow users to “Plug and Play”. Such social operating system like strategy would allow Facebook to take the lead in the Social Community space without loosing its freshness. Even in the desktop world applications come and go but the OS remains. Facebook employing a similar strategy has really taken a unique approach, which is clearly visible in numbers. Just take a look at the graph below comparing Facebook to MySpace, which has largely been dormant and failed to leverage on such an ecosystem play.
I hope other services can learn from this and offer ecosystem plays allowing deep integrations. Hence deriving flexibility for the end user. Post your comments around this to let me know what you think.
