google, social networking

Nov 02, 2007

Sorry about the lull in posts of late all. I've been busy traveling and catching up on much lost quality time with my girlfriend who has returned from Australia. Big news today though, with Google looking to taken on the Facebook Application juggernaut with their own API.

With what sounds like it could be a master stroke of Google can pull it off correctly, they are development a social network agnostic API for applications and then trying to get all the various sites on board to support it. So no longer would the likes of Slide have to develop their apps for Myspace, and then again for Facebook. It'd be once for OpenSocial and the deploy anywhere.

I can see the obvious parallels between this and Java with the 'write once, deploy everywhere' philosophy but I wonder how successful it will ultimately be. As appealing as it is for myself and other developer folk, it won't be us developers that are deciding where the critical mass of eyeballs decide to sign up. If Facebook maintain their own platform and it ends up a two horse race between them and another player, then it makes this kind of platform pointless as I'd still have to write the application twice.

Hopefully this is one of those situations where the size and credibility of Google helps pull it altogether. Go take a look once the site goes live.

Hi, I'm Glenn! 👋 I've spent most of my career working with or at startups. I'm currently the Director of Product @ Ockam where I'm helping developers build applications and systems that are secure-by-design. It's time we started securely connecting apps, not networks.

Previously I led the Terraform product team @ HashiCorp, where we launched Terraform Cloud and set the stage for a successful IPO. Prior to that I was part of the Startup Team @ AWS, and earlier still an early employee @ Heroku. I've also invested in a couple of dozen early stage startups.