Is following the leader bad?
Over the last few months, the scenes of the industry seem to have changed, and while Google-hype remains stronger than Jedi-fanaticism (which is saying a LOT), it will be fun to see how a community of “fair”, “philosophical”, “truthful”, and “out-to-save-the-world” people portray this situation. And no, I wasn’t exclusively referring to Slashheads.
When a zealot begin with “philosophy” while promoting a product, you just know they’re making their argument future-proof, just in case sometime in the future, someone made a technology that kicks their technology’s ass. That way, they can use stock phrases like, “Its all about the philosophy…. you just don’t understand….”
Facebook has had an API since forever. Facebook has had .Net stubs, Perl stubs, Java stubs, PHP stubs, Python stubs, and stubs for whatever the heck you wanted. If anyone really cared about “openness” and “programmability”, they could have done it years ago. Then, Microsoft signs a deal with Facebook for exclusive advertising, and Google is all about “openness”.
But that’s not the point here. What’s surprising is that everyone who blamed Microsoft for just “following what others do”, are sitting with their foots-in-their-mouths. Google not only followed what others did, but only did so when Microsoft signed the deal. Even if they’d have done this when Facebook first began with their API model, I’d have cut them some slack.
What’s more surprising is that OpenSocial is allegedly easier due to the almost non-debuggable JavaScript and pain-in-the-ass-to-maintain HTML. Now now, don’t get me wrong – I’m pro choice in this! I need JavaScript and HTML when developing web applications on top of the any SN. However, I also have custom desktop apps which allow me to monitor my facebook activities (such as vieweing my news feed and based on important notifications, actually visiting the site). Doesn’t seem all too “open” if I won’t be allowed to create first-class desktop apps using .Net or Java to play with my social network (does anyone remember the insanely helpful but bandwidth-intensive Scrapboy?). I’m not sure I really got the definition of “open” here.
Personally, the best combination of this API would be to pair it with Volta or Script#! Now that’s programming power to be reckoned with!
Validation for Facebook
Some good may yet come out of this. Most people who’re going ga-ga for OpenSocial in the last couple of days, were the same ones who’d been telling me that “API’s have nothing to do with it. So what if Facebook has an API? Who cares?”
I think what really gets filtered out through this whole excitement is that Facebook got it right an year ago! It means that the largest company on the webfront has now validated and openly stated that Facebook knew what they were doing. They got it right! It’s a certification that Facebook saw what everybody else failed to see. I congratulate Facebook on this certification.
What’s more interesting is that Facebook already has a lead on two fronts:
1. They got there first and they’ve faced and solved some problems first-hand (spamming, privacy protection, etc.)
2. They have a good desktop-strategy too. It gives me rich applications. Applications that can use my expensive hardware and all the 3D graphics support I paid for dearly. Applications aren’t just bland HTML pages.
Ending Note
On an ending note – I think it’s a great move by Google to create an API. Finally after a long time, hopefully I can do some cool stuff on orkut that I can’t do today. And if possible, I’d like to do it from my desktop. Should be fun how Facebook handles the situation – Facebook is just a plain simple good-technology company. They don’t try to do what should best be left to George Lucas.
