Panel Presentation: The Promise of Open Social at MIT/Stanford Venture Lab

Categories: Conference, OpenSocialPosted on February 11th, 2008

Left: Bright and colorful Stanford Red umbrellas grace the campus.

OpenSocial, a promise made, but little has been seen.

Not sure what OpenSocial is? Here’s how I explain OpenSocial to Executives.

If you want to learn more, then join us as I’ll be moderating a panel at Stanford Business School in Palo Alto this coming Tuesday, Feb 19th on the topic of the distributed web.

Join us: Shaking the Money Tree of Multi-Platform Social Networks
Why Pursue a Multi-platform social network strategy? Find Out the Pros and Cons.

The panelists will be:

Kevin Marks, Developer Advocate, OpenSocial Google

Keith Rabois, Vice President Business Strategy, Slide

Steve Cohen, Head of Platform, Bebo

Ken Gullicksen, Managing Partner, Morgenthaler Ventures

Part of why I got this fantastic gig to speak was because of my recent post on How to Successfully moderate a panel, I’ll be following many of those best practices as I listed out. One of the suggestions I made is to get audience feedback to gauge what success would look like.

So, if you were me, what questions would you ask the panel? Leave a comment below, I’m listening and will credit you if the question is asked.

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This entry was posted on Monday, February 11th, 2008 at 10:28 am and is filed under Conference, OpenSocial. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

One question I have: as engagement with social networks plateaus, will OpenSocial-based apps be able to turn that around, if so, how?

Posted by Clay Newton on February 11th, 2008 at 10:34 am

The following public questions came in from Twitter:

1 r_c: @jowyang since social apps monetise user data, will opensocial consider a parallel micro-payments mechanism to allow users to get paid?

2 jonnygoldstein: @jowyang how are they going to safeguard peoples’ personal data? 5 minutes ago from web in reply to

Posted by jeremiah_owyang on February 11th, 2008 at 10:52 am

3 Justin Rasmussen thisisjustin

@jowyang With MySpace and Facebook slowing (aka hitting critical mass) how could they change things? Your opinion?

Posted by jeremiah_owyang on February 11th, 2008 at 10:53 am

As social networks maintain a grip on their members, what are the pro’s and con’s of developers lobbying for a multi-platform, open-access MEMBER strategy?

Is this even a realistic prospect?

Posted by Jon Lister on February 11th, 2008 at 10:56 am

Q: What happened to the build it once, run it everywhere premise of open social? Every container for it has its own “views” and specific interface (api)

Q: Will google help us host/serve these widgets?

Q: Is opensocial going to replace google’s gadget format?

Posted by Brian Breslin on February 11th, 2008 at 11:36 am

Hi Jeremiah,

An important topic recently has been the spamminess of some of Facebook’s most popular applications, causing a slight peak in their user numbers despite continuing growth of Facebook itself. This has not only led to ‘application fatigue’ but decreases the value of applications to both users and marketers offering something of value (or developers).

Facebook are now making inroads into this by adapting the newsfeed, notification and invitation rules to ensure that users only get relevant messages and invites. As a marketer, I believe that this is absolutely vital for the future of applications. To be of real benefit, they must not only give value, but also be visible, and not buried in spam from other applications simply trying to get eyeballs for ads rather than real engagement (not naming names).

Are the open social initiative planning on creating rules to maintain application value within the framework, or are they going to leave this to individual networks?

This is important, as if the rules vary by network then the application may have to be programmed differently to ensure that they are optimised for each platform.

Thanks,

Josh

Posted by Joshua March on February 11th, 2008 at 11:37 am

Some fantastic applications here.

I learned on a call today that the audience is a Developers and Entrepreneurs, so keep that in mind when asking these questions.

Posted by jeremiah_owyang on February 11th, 2008 at 12:02 pm

I’m looking forward to the panel.

Here’s a question that I would ask:

“How do you envision blog widgets working with FB apps working with OpenSocial apps to create a unified user experience?”

Posted by lawrence on February 11th, 2008 at 9:13 pm

What will the iPhone (and similar web enabled mobile technology) do to social networks?

I’ll be at your event, see you there.

Posted by Sean Rehder on February 12th, 2008 at 12:22 am

Jeremiah,
Loved your blog that explains OpenSocial. Trying to catch up on your other blogs.

Disclosure: I work for rsitez.com, a white label social networking platform that focus on monetizing networks.

Question: How can the everyday non-tech user including group admins on social networking sites monetize their networks via open social?

Thanks,
Rohan Hall
http://www.rsitez.com

Posted by Rohan Hall on February 12th, 2008 at 9:11 am

How will Google’s OpenSocial run on Google Android? As social goes mobile, does OpenSocial have a path toward mobility?

Posted by Phil Wolff on February 16th, 2008 at 11:44 pm

[...] Jeremiah did a great thing that I haven’t seen many moderators do; he took the extra step of surveying his readers in advance of the panel on what they wanted to hear of the panel. What a great move! In fact, Jeff [...]

Posted by Ignite PR | Blog - vlabFeb08, How To Advice, social networking on March 10th, 2008 at 12:20 pm