Explaining OpenSocial to your Executives
There’s so many people talking at the developer, strategist, and marketing level, I’m going to take it up for another audience, feel free to repurpose this content any way you want.
You: A web decision maker
As a Web Strategist, you are someone who is partially or wholly responsible for the long-term direction of your website, or the website of your client(s). You have to explain the announcement to your boss (or you are the boss), I’m going to help.
[Using portable applications, companies can now efficiently extend their website experience to existing communities on popular social networks]
Terms
Social Network: An existing network or community where people of similar interest share. MySpace, LinkedIn, and Hi5 are examples. Mini-application, app, widget: These applications, created by third party developers or your company can sit on top of these existing thriving communities of connected people. Platform, Container, Social Network: Where the mini-applications ’sit’ on top of and interact API: The common code shared among platforms and developers of mini-applications
Situation: Nov 1st the “OpenSocial” is announced
Decisions are made on communities where trusted members share as a result, savvy companies go where their market is.
We’ve hit a milestone on how the web is becoming amorphous, data is about to be shared easily and quickly in a fluid way. Google and several other social networks in the alliance launched OpenSocial on Nov 1st. Microsoft, Yahoo, and Facebook are not part of the announcement (yet).
Four months ago, Facebook allowed third party companies to build mini-applications in their site, this is similar in concept, but now includes many other players.
‘Platform’ or ‘Container’ where your mini-application can extend to: MySpace, Bebo, SixApart, Orkut, Salesforce, LinkedIn, Ning, Hi5, Plaxo, Friendster, Viadeo and Oracle.
What is Open Social?
Google says: “OpenSocial provides a common set of APIs for social applications across multiple websites. With standard JavaScript and HTML, developers can create apps that access a social network’s friends and update feeds.”
Translation: Social Networks, and other websites (we can call them platforms or containers) can let mini-websites (applications or widgets) to be shared and interact with existing online communities (social networks, social graphs, communities).
Example: A company that sells a variety of blenders from their website can now create a mini-application that can be shared on any of the social networks that have agreed to participate in OpenSocial. The blender-related application will interact with each of these communities, and could benefit from features of users sharing, rating, and reccomending blenders to their friends. The blender application could reach new audiences that will interact with it, extending your reach.
Important Concept: Distributed
Web Marketing no longer is limited to your corporate site. Let go of the concept of ‘driving traffic to your website’ as a sole measurement of success. The web, it’s message, and your battles are now fought on the open and distributed web. Trusted decisions between prospects and customers are made on these social communities and networks, savvy executives need to go there.
Opportunities
Efficient development: Since there’s standardization in the code use (APIs) If you develop an application for OpenSocial, it should be easily re-used on all the social networks that are particiating. This greatly reduced development time, you no longer need a ‘myspace strategy’ or ‘bebo strategy’.
Harness existing communities: Since these applications will be plugged into existing communities, the need to ‘build an audience’ isn’t as crucial, as you can leverage the communities where they already exist. Why build if you can easily join.
Open standards help long term: It appear that the standards and development languages are commonly known and not proprietary so it reduced the chance of vendor lock in. Having a common code (API) across all networks makes movement easier, reducing development and re-configuring in the long term. One should always be cautious, as no system is perfect.Your existing applications become social: Now, your standalone applications can now be shared with communities. If you’ve already spend resources on creating interactive marketing, large libraries, or other projects, consider how they can be re purposed on these websites, be efficient with your resources.
Future brings social to your website: The trend clearly nods towards the direction I forsee, that social networking features (friends and connections) will be brought to the static corporate website. Soon, there will be customers, prospects and employees networked on your own corporate website. We’re not there yet, but start planning on how that will look.
Challenges
Unproven: We’re still at the start of this movement, there’s no reason to jump in as the bugs have not been identified nor corrected.
Open data opens risks: It’s not fully clear how data will be shared among the multiple platforms. By giving them access to your applications, there is risk in exposing login information, and other sensitive information. The same applies to user data, the risks are not fully known
Inconsistencies may emerge: Just because there is a common set of code (APIs) doesn’t mean all of the applications will behave across each of the platforms. There may be inconsistency as no user shares the same set of friends (social graph) on each network.
Cultural differences: Social Networks are adopted and vary by culture. From LinkedIn’s business network, to Orkut’s Brazilian users no two networks are the same. Expecting an application to work seamlessly for all applications is foolish, expect to research each community before customization.Future authority not known: Although lead by Google, this alliances appears to be a conglomerate of many different companies involved, it’s not clear who the governing body will be, from a single group, a representative, or even Google.
[Although we’re at the unproven starting point, the opportunity is promising, companies wanting to extend their online presence should consider the distributed web (OpenSocial) into their 2008 web strategy planning]
Next Steps
1) Wait and watch: Unless you’re already have successful widgets deployed on Facebook, wait a bit, no need to jump in, let the alpha teams build and break.
2) Host internal discussion: In the meantime, have a brown bag meeting with your development team and web strategy leaders to discuss how existing applications could be repurposed, and how your future roadmaps will consider deploying.
3) Develop Strategy: Understand that this is a new sandbox and if you decide to venture, it should be experimental, and flexibility is needed. Be sure to bake measurement into the start, so you can gauge and benchmark your progress.
4) Educate: Return to this Web Strategy blog, I’ve started a new tag called OpenSocial where you can filter all posts on this topic, I’ll be posting helpful information going forward.
Related Resources
Starting point:The official OpenSocial Webpage Video: OpenSocial hosted an event on the opening night, this hour long video has demos of code and applications What matters: Forrester colleague Charlene Li breaks down what is likely to happen, and why you should care Developers: Ted, CEO of Dogster compares and contrasts the announcement. Thinking Bigger: Six Apart sees the forest, this is development for the whole web, not just Google. Opinions: There are many, many voices on Techmeme if you want more color
I’ve worked hard to clearly and succinctly explain the announcement, if you’re a client of Forrester, and wish to talk more, please schedule and inquiry, I’m at your service to help define your strategy.
104 Comments so far
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Jeremiah - great and timely post. I was just at an event yesterday where someone on my panel mentioned Open Social to a room full of blank faces. This is one of your great posts that helps to explain tech concepts in a way that make sense for business strategy. I love that being with Forrester now seems like it is giving you more time (and incentive) to do posts like this. It’s making your always useful blog now indispensable. I’ll be forwarding this link to lots of folks …
Rohit, coming from you, a guy on the front lines helping clients this means a lot, thanks.
I actually completed this post before 6am, my day starts early.
I second Rohit — this one’s going straight off to my clients as a must-read. Thanks Jeremiah.
I’ll just echo Rohit’s sentiments. I just sent this to my team. Very well done.
ok, just a thought from the heart of a 200,000 employee hairball: Don’t mention Open Social to anyone who you couldn’t explain POP to in 30 seconds or less
just sent your post to my exec team so we can pow-wow over the business opportunity…thanks Jeremiah…
[…] Original post by Web Strategy by Jeremiah […]
Explaining OpenSocial to your Executives…
There’s so many people talking at the developer, strategist, and marketing level, I’m going to take it up for another audience, feel free to repurpose this content any way you want….
Excellent summary and recommendations Jeremiah - thanks for helping sort through all of the media to develop a concise executive summary.
Jeremiah,
Excellent timing! I have a client call this afternoon to discuss long-term strategies and OpenSocial is an agenda item they just added.
I’m also going to send this article around to my team to discuss in our next meeting.
Melissa, that’s great, that’s what I want to hear. Be sure to let me know how it goes, my email is on my contact page.
[…] Jeremiah talks about how to explain OpenSocial to executives… a great posting and a must […]
[…] does this mean to Business though? Jeremiah Owyang, explains it very clearly in an excellent post. Spend some time and read it and understand what Open Social is all about and how to capitalise on […]
Jeremiah,
Thank you. I can now add a very relevant postscript to a presentation I was already giving on Tuesday about developing integrated communication plans for nonprofits using social networks. Fantastic.
Beth
Good thoughts. I’d add:
The implication of all this are as big as when the web first emerged in ‘94 and ‘95, unleashing a wave of experimentation, innovation, and disruption. The social web, which is now going to be, as we hoped, the open social web will change your business. Don’t wait. Jump in.
Want to see the first open display of an OpenSocial app? I just posted it here: http://blog.plaxo.com/archives/2007/11/first_peek_at_o.html
Jeremiah -
Thanks so much for this post. I’m in the middle of 2008 planning for my clients and this is a great strategic post.
I’m sending this around to my team and our account directors.
Jane
*Wait and Watch*
LOL — very good recommendation!
;D nmw ( www.ดู.net )
NMW
To be clear: It’s watch, wait, but plan.
Jeremiah–
This one is getting a lot of talking around our offices today. Very well reasoned, well stated. Thanks for sharing.
~Jim
Great post. I have a quick question. Does OpenSocial allow developers to access the social information when they are NOT on the container site? What if I want to use a social network as an address book within my application. Could I do that?
Ah, sorry — I skim alot. OK, well I also just posted on readwriteweb, but they appear not to appreciate skepticism. I will probably summarize some of my posts that draw attention to some of the more risky “concerns” Google’s attempt at building an alliance of partners has (and that are not being published at some of these sites) in the discussion going on at http://battellemedia.com/archives/004062.php — and I will also recommend your article and/or website as a reliable source for honest & open discussion!
Thank you for providing such a valuable resource!
Rod
That’s part of the unknown part, I have a few briefings today and will see what I can find out.
Just a guess, but that seems a bit risky. There’s going to be potentially thousands of apps developers, do we really want them to be accessing data when outside of the container?
The data risks haven’t fully been outlined yet.
Man I am sooooo excited. And thankyou for the breakdown. It certainly has been a challenge explaining the distributed web to companies…adding in buzzwords like widgets…now OpenSocial I can already see the puzzled faces. But this really has let open the flood gates. When Facebook did it, this is still a social network that many companies had no idea how to insert themselves into. But now with Google, and Myspace and the variety of other companies, I can see this significantly strengthening my position as I campaign for more of a decentralized web strategy!!!!
Jumping for joy
Marco
Bingo, you got it. “Distributed” or “Decentralized” web strategy is right.
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Great post, but no one over the age of 30 knows anything about SN at the media company where I work!
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Jake
Yes, but their kids do. Start the conversation there. “How do your kids communicate?” What happens when they enter the workforce? etc.
ID management? Who knows? - show stopper.
Ad sharing among shared apps. How does that work? - show stopper
Interop? - lot of unanswered issues. Could be a show stopper. Marc Canter knows about this.
Timeframe for delivering apps? No idea. Who will care after a while once devs realize this is not some holy grail.
Standards management? No word - show stopper
Does Google have any experience in managing larger numbers of diverse, external application providers? No. Any plans about how that will happen given that Google has yet to complete an app outside its own ad algos how much confidence can anyone have?
Did you listen to the shambles that passed for a press conference? Appalling lack of organization. How can any serious developer trust a company that behaves this way?
Did you notice how they fluffed the Ts & Cs question? Do you know how inconsistent their existing Ts & Cs truly are?
This is way harder than most people are suggesting.
If any other player had made this kind of announcement, no=one would have cared. Why? Because intentions are not the same as deliverables.
[…] In other social media news, Jeremiah Owyang explains Open Social for your executives. […]
Jeremiah,
I knew I could count on you to distill it all AND provide some thinking on the next steps. Thanks.
Hmm .. this one is off the charts on the comment ratio, isn’t it?
Great post@! Thank you.
PS your offer to “repurpose” or “remix” the context - why don’t you put a Creative Commons license on it …:-)
http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/2007/11/personal-fundra.html
Beth, this is a good one, but see the one where I announced I was going to Forrester. I think it’s over 150
Dennis
Do you think these good points you brought up are going to stop developers and the containers from building? I suspect not.
You do such a brilliant job of translating it from ‘geek formatted’ to ‘business formatted’
Major kudos on this - and thanks! Your distillation is a great one!
[…] Read more… […]
[…] Owyang likewise has a good post on what OpenSocial means, as does his colleague Charlene Li. As she says, developers will deploy for Facebook first, before […]
[…] Finally, for an interesting and useful breakdown of what OpenSocial means for business executives, including advice on next steps (like waiting and watching, but planning) check out Jeremiah Owyang’s post. […]
@Jeremiah: yes I do and I already know that several of the largest players out there are not going to touch this with a barge pole. For the time being at least.
Dennis
You’re probably right, there will be many who won’t go here. BUT, there’s going to be many who will develop here gaining first mover advantage.
I was one of those calling Facebook a black hole a few months ago when they exposed their API yet many (thousands) went in. A few were acquired (maps to tripadivsor) and profited.
It’s saturday morning 24 hours after I published this. Here are google analytics stats for this post
2,360 Pageviews
1,996 Unique Views
00:05:15 Time on Page (The most important one)
The usual attention time per post is less than half of that, this could suggest people are really reading this post, good.
I hope it clears things up for the industry.
[…] Explaining OpenSocial to your Executives Jeremiah Owyang talks about OpenSocial (tags: social social-change business google ideas open-social innovation marketing facebook) […]
What is OpenSocial? Yes, it’s a business model innovation…
There’s a myriad of posts on OpenSocial already and I know that I’m a latecomer to the party. Yet I will try to put down some observations and notes, if only because this has rattled the plans for my planned BarCamp session this weekend. I …
Ok this is definitely a new term. and thanks for taking the time for the explanations.
[…] Owyang breaks down Google’s OpenSocial announcement for the common person to understand: “Since there’s standardization in the code use (APIs) […]
[…] Over the last couple of days, most if not all of the blogs I regularly read have offered either their take on OpenSocial, or a digest on the posts they found interesting or helpful. I was able to draw on a few of […]
Hey Jeremiah, excellent post.
[…] For the uninitiated, Google’s big news on Thursday was that it launched OpenSocial, a set of APIs (application programming interface) so Web sites can build interconnecting social applications. The big plus: Developers only have to learn one API. Here are all the must sees to get up to speed: Google’s FAQ, coverage from Dan Farber and David Berlind, video and audio and Techmeme where coverage from around the Web is rounded up. Update: Jeremiah Owyang has a timely post on explaining OpenSocial to executives. […]
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nice job…thanks - for saving me time - I just have to point to your post..;)
Thank you for this. Interesting and useful for keeping clients up to speed.
[…] base. It won’t be about search results a few years from now. It’ll be about leveraging highly focused usage patterns and predictive ‘intelligence’ to drive social and commercial […]
[…] UPDATE: Excellent condensé de situation par Jeremiah Owyang:Explaining OpenSocial to your Executives […]
Jeremiah, thanks for the excellent post. Our marketing team is discussing it right now in our group on Facebook!
Thanks Jeremiah. Have just explained OpenSocial to my boss over Skype and he gets it, AND think it’s an excellent strategic angle for our clients.
Fabulous.
[…] To watch: OpenSocial As OpenSocial starts to be deployed across MySpace and other partners, expect profile ads to be tied to widgets and vice versa; a fabric of links. I’ve already outlined How to explain OpenSocial to your executives. […]
Very insightful. The big question is whether or not this will launch a ‘create once and distribute to multiple platforms’ will really work. I like that you brought in some of the ‘cultural’ differences across multipel websites.
[…] Jeremiah Owyang did a good job of explaining the whole OpenSocial concept in executive (i.e. layman) terms, but if you can’t be bothered to read his post here’s […]
I see opensocial has been hacked - certainly supports your wait and see
How rude of me - can I also thank you for your post - the best explanation I have seen yet and I was so glad I didn’t have to watch the 1 hr video.
I like Marc Cantor’s take that the Open Social introduction is the first step in the socialisation of all applications. I commented about this, and linked to a video of the Marc Cantor interview in my blog (http://blog.itr8.com/2007/11/marc-cantor-on-open-social.html).
Also, a good definition of ’social graph’ would be a nice addition to your post Jeremiah.
Bill, You’re the second person to request a social graph definition. I’ll work on it.
Jackie, thanks for being considerate, I do my best to save you time!
[…] from here […]
Composite Application Development Analysis…
Original Assignment Description Assign a sr developer to build a helloworld app on the following platforms: salesforce.com, facebook, google, amazon, myspace…….
thanks for the details, its all make me sure about how to develop open socila using CMS such as Drupal
[…] Explaining OpenSocial to your Executives Owyang primer’s bottom line: “…we’re at the unproven starting point, [but] the opportunity is promising, companies wanting to extend their online presence should consider into their 2008 web strategy planning.” (tags: strategery opensocial API opensocialweb portablesocialnetworks socialnetworkportability) […]
[…] He tips Google’s OpenSocial as the thing to watch - and has a great post on how to explain OpenSocial to your executives. […]
[…] of pundits, analysts and vendors who have decided that being open is now acceptable and have all lined up with some sort of opinion on OpenSocial, sprouting off tutorials on how to set up Facebook Ads and/or what it has to do with […]
[…] with user experience, but there’s concerns about user data, and we have to be careful. (learn more about Open Social) Google has advertising on MySpace, and discusses hyper targeted, to learn more about Hyper […]
[…] Social is best explained on the official Google Open Social page and on this terrific “Open Social for Dummies Executives” page. Open Social is a Google-led initiative to bring some open standards to social networks that will […]
[…] …The Media Social Starfish… I love Scobleizer’s commentary on the “Media Social Starfish” and more so Jeremiah Owyang’s blog post on “Explaining Open Social for your executives”. […]
Superb post - have had it open on a tab for a week or so and have just had time to read it properly, giving it the time it justly deserves.
I know I could just say “ditto” to what everyone else has said, but thank you for this post. Really sums it all up nicely and makes it VERY easy to help present this to clients.
Much appreciated.
This post brings you and other ‘’social subject matter experts” down to earth and allows corporates across different sectors and geographies (and not only in Silicon Valley) to relate and understand how this could be relevant to them-even if their products and services are not consumed in an online environment. ”Reconnaissance” has come back to the troops to show-share intelligence with them and translate it into boardroom table practical language. It helps traditional thinkers with the ”forward thinking, planning & moving steps ” required to reach the next milestone - business growth & innovation.
In this ”post-back-n-brief” activity is where real transformational business value is created.
More of these ”how could this apply to your business-corporation” - and more
serious consideration ‘’social” will get from business.
Meaningful post!
[…] Need to make decisions about your web strategy? I’m here to help: subscribe to my blog, sign up for emails (right nav), follow me on Twitter, or add me on Facebook (I’ll add you back for each). Web Strategy Summary I’m starting to notice the changes that open social concept is bringing to the social networking space. Although nothing has been deployed in full force, the desire for companies to quickly become ‘open’ or not be part of the party is evident. Most of the below are updates, there hasn’t been any amazing news this week. Confused about Open Social? here’s how to explain it to your executives. […]
[…] explaining-opensocial-to-your-executives (tags: www.web-strategist.com 2007 mes10 dia28 at_tecp OpenSocial explicação_introdutória blog_post) […]
[…] an article from Jeremiah and things became crystal […]
Another great post, Jeremiah. You have a keen ability to provide clarity in a sea of technobabble and hype.
I thought your advice to wait, watch, and plan is right on target. I don’t see any obvious first-mover advantage here for companies without existing Facebook widgets.
It will be interesting to see how the froth of experimentation will vindicate or nullify the concerns many people have. I suspect this is the classic example of a system with emergent properties: people are trying to predict what will happen, but with so many interacting, distributed entities, who really knows?
[…] Read the rest of this great post here […]
[…] Explaining OpenSocial to your Executives […]
[…] Explaining OpenSocial to your Executives […]
Open Social for your executives by Jermiah Owyang…
Jeremiah Owyang (a web strategist, one of the leading experts on social media) told us: Using miniapplications,……
Open Social for your executives by Jeremiah Owyang…
Jeremiah Owyang (a web strategist, one of the leading experts on social media) told us: Using miniapplications,……
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Thanks, i’ll be checking out your OpenSocial tagged items!
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OpenSocial - der Kampf um Daten…
Ein Wort macht die Runde: OpenSocial, ein Standard, um Daten zwischen sozialen Webseiten auszutauschen. Es könnten aber auch andere, einfache Anwendungen gleichzeitig auf verschiedenen Seiten genutzt……
Wait and Watch - ist OpenSocial wichtig?…
Die Antwort ist einfach: bereiten Sie sich jetzt vor. Die ersten Erfolgsgeschichten zeigen, wie wichtig es wird. Allerdings gibt es neben den Vorteilen auch einige Herausforderungen und im Augenblick……
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Excellent post!
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[…] Explaining OpenSocial to your Executives […]