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Battle Lines Being Drawn Over OpenSocial
SkiifGeek writes "Microsoft employees have already openly criticized Google's OpenSocial initiative (recently discussed here), and now there's news that one of the first OpenSocial applications, emote by Plaxo, was hacked within 45 minutes of appearing on the Net (it was subsequently pulled while Plaxo looked into fixing the holes). Although coding errors can happen to anyone, leaving evidence of lax programming discipline when all it takes to view your code is 'View Source' is poor form. It seems that the battle lines have been drawn between Microsoft and Google through their social networking proxies, with Facebook getting ready to fire the next salvo in the social networking battle."
First, let's define the problem: Facebook is winning the social network wars. Even though Myspace has a trillion users, it is passe and Facebook is The New Thing. As more people join Facebook, switching costs get lower, leading to a cascade effect. In terms of the diffusion of innovations curve, Facebook is now being heavily adopted by the "Early Majority", indicating they've got a good one or two years left of substantial growth. In Google's eyes, this is a major problem because it can't really afford to "lose" at social networks for the next two years.
The OpenSocial value proposition goes something like this: Adopt opensocial, push your data into more places, and everyone wins. Consumers get their information needs answered in more places, and companies get their footprint in more places. And more or less, I think more relevant social services in more places is a win, but not in the Facebook-killing way.
To put it bluntly, OpenSocial isn't an anything "killer." And OpenSocial isn't going to save Myspace.
Sigs cause cancer.
Chromatic points out that the whole problem addressed by Ope\ nSocial's API has already been solved:
Honestly, I can't understand why Google et al. would ignore this work. If only there were some way of contacting them...
Carousel is a lie!
I, Microsoft, being of 404 NOT FOUND, hereby leave Google...a boot to the head. In other news, not many people will care about OpenSocial...whatever, as people are ignorant and will only start caring when things are thrown at them when they didn't expect it. Simple fact of life.
Who the hell really cares what way the social net wars go? Maybe if you're an active developer I can see it but otherwise it's like arguing over superman versus batman.
This kind of bickering will hopefully turn some people against social networks and get some kids back to doing their own pages again instead of using lame ass templates.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
Batman. Obviously.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
...that I have nothing to do with the universe of social sites and such. From the sound of it all, I am missing nothing at all, eccept an opportunity to waste precious time.
Oh, yeah, slashdot....
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
So the first OpenSocial app that someone rushed out the door ASAP to be the first, as opposed to it being a professional tech demo, was made by somebody stupid when it comes to security (aka 99% of developers). So what?
Sometimes the tech-world is just a bunch of kindergarden kids.
Get on with it, use it or ignore it. Improve it, if you find it useful, don't go around complaining about stuff you don't like but other apparently do.
Or ignore all this social crapstuff like I myself do and have a life on your own, create and be happy.
Life can be just SO SIMPLE.
The generation of youngsters that is pushing these Social Networks into prominence have the attention span of a crack-addled butterfly. They will flit about and land on the next thing soon enough, and then, after they are done with it, the corporations will notice and will invest in it a couple of years after its lost its prominence. Ask a teen. Any teen.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
Where everyone was making GeoCities, AngelFire and etc.. personal websites and linking back too all of their friends. You'd see people who had very little computer knowledge picking up basic html and marking up pages. Yes they were ugly but people learned new skills. You also saw quite a bit more personal and in depth content. This would have survived if it wasn't for god man pop up and under windows clogging peopled computer screens. Eventually the amount of forced advertising made it next to impossible to create a page that wouldn't piss off new viewers with pop ups or taking over a 1/4 of someone computer screen.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
I haven't really been keeping up to date on these social network wars I guess. I keep trying to find these Google and Microsoft Social websites to take a look at them and I'm finding they don't exist or are more theoretical things than tangible? WTF, how can your "open API" be better than a website that exists already.
I don't understand why any tech-savvy early adopter would be dying to lock into a platform. The companies are just as hungry for users to use their platform. I'm guessing it's all to lock in ad-revenue or mind-share or some other sinister corporate plan. It's too bad that the Internet used to be about open-communication. RFC's people! RFC's!! (I'm a big fan of the mention another poster made to the "dusty old RFC" that already solved this problem back in the 80's).
Social networking is dangerous to personal security. It's more about who you know, and sometimes we get involved with scrupulous parties that are not in-favor with the current dominant social circles. How long until creditors, government agencies, and employers exploit social networks online?
If one wishes to maintain a public network and a private one, that's there prerogative and is certainly maintainable. However, imagine a hypothetical situation where someone in that network gets flagged as a bad-apple by some institution. Would it be possible that policies at said institution may flag you as a bad-apple by association?
I nominate thoat for funniest comment by a "programmer" of the year.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
Advertisers battling to the death?
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/11/02/ok-heres-at-least-part-of-what-facebook-is-announcing-on-tuesday/
Looks like there's gonna be a Face-On/Face-Off...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Sites like GeoCities and Angelfire, and how they were used in the "old skool days" are different than the social networking sites today. GC provided a platform for users to do anything. So, you had a huge mish-mash of random personal websites (what we'd call blogs and social networking sites today) and of actual, real content (guides to your favorite comic, cooking tips, video game info, whatever).
For those who merely want to be able to have a public diary or a forum where they can communicate with their friends, I think it's a good thing that we have sites like Facebook which provide all of the basic tools. It's certainly much more usable to my friends who I still want to keep in touch with, but aren't computer savvy at all.
On the other hand, Facebook and MySpace are not meant to replace the other type of GeoCities/Angelfire sites, the one with actual content. I agree that a lot of that stuff was pretty in-depth and interesting at times. For those sites, there are other web platforms you'd use to publish your content.
-- jchenx
This kind of bickering will hopefully turn some people against social networks and get some kids back to doing their own pages again instead of using lame ass templates.
I thought the whole idea was to build APIs that would tie into social networks. This should allow people to build their own sites/blogs/whatever, using any combination of custom/template/third-party widgets. How is giving people more options a bad thing? It seems to me this will open up social networks, moving them away from the gated communities we have now. This should inspire more (not less) creativity.
I'm also not sure why it is intrinsically better for "the kids" to be building their own pages, rather than using social networking template pages. I suppose it is better for those kids who want to get into web development, but for the rest of them, building pages from scratch is the drudge work, and putting their own words, images, and moving pictures into the pages is the real fun. Again, more options are better, imho. The kids that want to learn web development will still be drawn to build their own sites, and they'll now have more tools with which to hook into template-driven sites.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Google releases open social without a RI for the server, promising one *any day now*. In the meantime, they're also proposing all sorts of new data standards and pushing a creaky technology to the limit.
Oh, and they're easy to hack.
Of who am I reminded?
(*Apologies to Flannery O'Connor.)
668: Neighbour of the Beast
This just in:
http://www.regdeveloper.co.uk/2007/11/06/opensocial_security_risk/
News for nerds.
The opensocial api is still in beta and is still missing some pieces. One of those pieces is authorization. So its not possible to write a secure opensocial app at the moment. Thats why "hacking" the application is not the correct term. Btw: here is the answer from google from the mailing list:
To be clear: There is currently no mechanism for authenticating/
validating requests against third party servers. This will be
resolved when we launch the Data APIs, which will allow for
authenticated calls to be made from your server directly to the Orkut
sandbox servers. Additionally, we are working on a mechanism that
will sign _IG_Fetch requests, allowing you to verify server-side that
the request was not spoofed. Both of these will certainly be in place
by the public launch of the Orkut sandbox.
This is right up there in importance with Jay Leno's script writers being on strike.
They care, I don't.
But is there any real profit to be in social networks? I mean it's nice to have a basic 'conduit' to meet up with people online, but when I was a teenager, that was what IRC was for. For others it's Ventrilo or Steam Community. In the end, I see it as an application layer set atop the inherent power of the Internet, which is to connect random people with little effort (little effort in as much as without physical travel and what not for said random people), thus it doesn't give anything new in itself rather than a nicer 'wrapper' to access the same features of the Internet that have existed in one form or another. Be it USEnet, IRC, mailing lists, and what not.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I've had it. I'm completely sick of hearing about companies throwing good money away trying to build "cool" software that has no business model other than "become popular and then sell ads", and at the end of the day really accomplishes nothing more than marginally improving geeks' chances of getting laid. Have we learned nothing from the dotcom era? These companies are blinded by the promise of harnessing the hype rampant on sites like slashdot. Yes, they're idiots, but we're enabling them.
Google is absolutely expert at converting hype to ad revenue, but that's because they know when to stop throwing good money after bad and cut their losses when the hype fades. It may result in some cool apps, but don't think for a second that OpenSocial will "change everything", unless of course by "change everything" you really mean "make it easier to meet women without leaving the house".
There's no failure quite as dissatisfying as a complete and total solution to the wrong problem.
...where the men are men, the women are men, and the 14 year old girls are FBI agents...
...now with these 'social' networks, a kind might sit behind a computer all day and still be considered social.
It's a change with fundamental consequences for society...
A certain large company from R*dm*nd is feuding with another company, and security has become an issue?
The X-Files writers could NEVER have dreamed that one up!
-jn-
http://albumoftheday.com/facebook/
Sheer, unbridled, evil.
RR
As for other benefits to social networks (particularly Facebook, the one I most frequent), there are plenty. One in particular is that it's less intrusive, especially with folks you might consider to be more on the level of an "acquaintance". I wouldn't call up a classmate I only knew briefly in high school, and probably not e-mail either (especially if they haven't made it visible). Yet something like Facebook allows for lighter interaction (pokes/prods/nudges/writing on walls), as well as being able to lurk and view their visible profile/photos/etc.
For example, let's say this classmate now works in the same city you do. Your interactions with him/her can start off lightly (post on their wall: "Hi! Remember me from school? Anyway, just wanted to say hi!"), and then possibly move from there. Sure, at some point, it might get deeper (exchange e-mail, phone numbers, meet up over lunch, etc.). Basically, it's another way of establishing connections, finding friends, etc. Heck, I've seen it used as an excellent way of establishing romantic relationships (flirting, etc.).
Yes, you can still do all of this using existing technologies (phone, e-mail), but that doesn't mean that should remain the only way. Your attitude almost reminds me of folks who were nay sayers on cell phones, or heck, even e-mail: "What's wrong with just calling people? Who needs this newfangled e-mail thing?"
-- jchenx