November 01, 2007 | Thursday
Google goes OpenSocial, Facebook fronts SocialAds
By Jackie Danicki - Blogger in Marketing |News |Search Engines |Google |Microsoft
I wrote here on October 9 about predictions for Google’s share price:
Some firms, including Bear Stearns, are predicting that Google’s shares will reach the $700 mark at some point over the next twelve months.
In the end, it did not even take one month for that to happen: Google’s share price surpassed $700 yesterday. But today has equally big things in store for the search giant, with a development that should make Facebook - and its new investor, Microsoft - a little nervous.
From the New York Times:
On Thursday, an alliance of companies led by Google plans to begin introducing a common set of standards to allow software developers to write programs for Google’s social network, Orkut, as well as others, including LinkedIn, hi5, Friendster, Plaxo and Ning…
“It is going to forestall Facebook’s ability to get everyone writing just for Facebook,” said a person with knowledge of the plans who asked to remain anonymous because he was not authorized to speak on behalf of the alliance. The group’s platform, which is called OpenSocial, is “compatible across all the companies,” that person said.
This should make it less appealing for application developers to create new Facebook-specific apps. Techcrunch has a gallery of screenshots which show OpenSocial in action.
The jury is still out on whether the OpenSocial alliance’s traffic will measure up to Facebook’s, but Google is clearly feeling good about this move. You can almost hear the smug smile in this quote from Joe Kraus, their director of product management:
“Obviously, we would love for them to be part of it,” Mr. Kraus said of Facebook. Facebook declined to comment.
I’ll bet they did!
Not that Facebook doesn’t have its own big announcement on the horizon - and one that could pack a serious punch. The company will imminently launch SocialAds, its own ad network which will run anywhere on the web - much like Google AdSense, in fact. Facebook possesses a goldmine of data on its millions of users, and plans to use it to serve tailored ads based on the users’ profiles and behavior.
Google’s Kraus revealed another interesting nugget to the Times: Specifically, that the OpenSocial project plans predated Microsoft’s investment in Facebook. If Google stands a chance of pounding Facebook and Microsoft in one fell swoop...Well, that $700 share price might just be justified.
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