John McCrea Of Plaxo Talks About Google’s OpenSocial Platform
Google wants in on the social networking game and, as we mentioned this morning, the company plans to unveil a new set of APIs designed to give developers a cross-network platform — think the Facebook platform without the Facebook lock-in.
Plaxo, one of the “host” networks embracing Google’s APIs, plans to unveil new features later this week which take advantage of Google’s API platform.
Obviously anything that steals some drive from Facebook’s relentless growth in the social networking sphere is going to help smaller companies like Plaxo, but John McCrea, VP or marketing at Plaxo, doesn’t see Facebook as a threat to just smaller networks, but also the web as a whole.
“Facebook and MySpace were (are) trying to build a proprietary web platform, says McCrea. “Those of us that believe in openness saw that as a threat to the open web.” While the Google backed platform is open, McCrea doesn’t see it as a panacea. “This is a pretty big and important thing, but its by no mean the last volley in the war.”
While the new platform is a is welcome news for developers, it may not have much impact on users like you and I. Instead this is a big benefit for developers who want to able to deploy a single app across every social networking site. Eventually that may trickle down into new features for the rest of us to take advantage of, but details about how and when remain up in the air.
Still, if you’ve been on the fence regarding social networks, today’s announcement could finally add the features you’ve been looking for. “I think until fairly recently we looked at social networking as fun and frivolous, but it’s not just fun, it’s fundamentally and when you have it hooked up with outside applications it turbo charges the network.”
In other words, this announcement could end up generating a whole new range of interconnected web apps. Or it might not. “This a really bold move that has unpredictable consequences,” says McCrea. “It will remind us, i think, of the beginning of the web back in 1995 when there was lots of experimentation. And a lot of it will fail, but the good, useful things will survive.”
Unfortunately Google’s APIs don’t address our chief complaint about social networks — our data is stranded and difficult to share with those outside the latest hip network.
McCrea agrees saying that the new APIs are “not so much about network to network data exchange but rather a developer platform.”
So what of the fabled “broadcasting hub” that lets us post information from a single source and then have each network automatically update our information and send back update from our friends? Sadly, that isn’t likely to happen any time soon.
But there’s no need to give up hope. As McCrea points out, “this is the beginning of something rather than the final act.”
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