Facebook Takes a Swing at Google
Posted by Mark Levy | Posted in Social Networks | Posted on 16-05-2008
Tags: facebook, Friend Connect, google, social networking
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Bob Bickel, founder of Ringside Networks, has written an article digging into the behind the scenes struggles between Google and Facebook over Google’s Friend Connect service. Facebook has been willing to share with other network’s integrated applications but told Google to talk to the hand. Social Networking sites have yet to achieve the revenue levels that they so desperately need to maintain their services in the long run. Which path is correct? open sharing or isolationism?
By Bob Bickel
Facebook came out swinging yesterday to defend their users and their turf. http://developers.facebook.com/news.php?blog=1&story=111. They have basically shut down Google’s use of their API to collect user profile and social graph information on the new Friend Connect service. Here’s my take on the background and what is going on…
Google has made a nice business out of an open Internet. Facebook carved out a nice little corner of the Internet with a social network that does not give Google the type of visibility they would like into that little corner. In addition, that little corner looks like it might be kind of valuable. Google makes a few moves like buying Orkut and amassing all the other social networking vendors and creating Open Social. Those things are OK, but not really opening up that corner that Google now has become to covet.
Well, the world of social network walled gardens kind of exploded last week. MySpace, Facebook and Google all seemed to rush announcements to market without full thought, without proper collaboration and certainly a bit hastily.
