Facebook’s Feet of Clay

I hate to say I told you so, but…actually, I don’t. Facebook, you’re on notice now, you’ve got to rev the innovation machine up to red line and fast or you’re toast. Google’s OpenSocial is going to eat your lunch, and breakfast and dinner. At this point (1:00 PM PT), just about everyone except Facebook is signing onto OpenSocial, including MySpace–MySpace Joining Google’s OpenSocial - Silicon Alley Insider. At last count we have Plaxo, LinkedIn, Beebo, SixApart…care to add to the list?

The discussion is really heavy out there, Scoble is comparing Facebook to Friendster (apt, imho), Dave McClure isn’t lighting the funeral pyre for Facebook…yet, the NYT doesn’t think this is the FB killer, but blogger Jon Swift (pseudonym) is having his own battles with FB, so the question I think is how will FB’s downfall happen?

I’m going to go for a slow and steady slide. Why? Because what will happen is that people will need to time to realize that they don’t need FB anymore to keep in touch with people. This time, I think, is going to be at least three months.

Sure it will be those of us who are addicted to the the new shiny toys who will grow weary of FB first (I tell you just a Scrabble game alone might make me jump!). I’ll be watching the uber-FB connected cities of Toronto and Vancouver for signs of the exodus. Like I said, it isn’t going to be a mass leaving, more like people just not going there as often.

This is what I’ve been saying all along about Facebook–all it has is it’s members and if they find a “something better” they are toast. Sure we wrote MySpace off, smart move of theirs to jump on OpenSocial. This, I think, has the potential to breath new life into them. Of course they might want to work on the ugliness of a lot of it, but that’s just me.

Dave McClure makes the audience member size argument well in his post. Sure we’re all a twitter about OpenSocial, but in order to be a real FB killer, the aggregated audience of all the folks on side will have to work together.

Hmm, maybe if WordPress and Automattic jump on board…

BTW, as Jerome of bnFrance reports … OpenSocial has already crossed the pond.

Forgot to link to Marc’s post on OpenSocial originally (since he got insight directly from Plaxo)…yes, as Marc aptly put, the game is afoot.

This is getting really fun … Scoble has put forth the idea of the Social Media Starfish (technically they are called “sea stars”) and Darren Barefoot made a nicer version of the one Scoble drew in his video:

Mathew Ingram has chimed in on his personal blog, love this ending:

I’m going to write about this some more later, but I think this is potentially huge (although Saul Hansell of the New York Times disagrees). In effect, we have Google and everyone else that matters in the social-networking space on one side, and Facebook and its more or less proprietary, walled-garden approach on the other. Game on.

Technorati Tags: blognation, blognation Canada, OpenSocial, Facebook, MySpace, Plaxo, Google, LinkedIn, Six Apart, WordPress, Automattic