Open Source: It's all LinkedIn

As I noted in my post “Why No Billion-Dollar Open Source Companies?", one of the reasons there are no large pure-play open source companies is that their business model is based on giving back to customers most of the costs the latter have traditionally paid to software houses.

On Open Enterprise blog.

Proof that Microsoft Now Fears for the Desktop

Hmm, lookee here: Microsoft wants to hire a Director, Open Source Desktop Strategy. Here are the details:

The Windows Competitive Strategy team is looking for a strong team member to lead Microsoft’s global desktop competitive strategy as it relates to open source competitors. Our team mission is to gather intelligence, create business strategies, and drive action in the marketplace for the Windows Client business. In this job, you will be asked to think strategically, put yourself in the mindset of our competitors, influence multi-million dollar marketing campaigns, and drive high-level executive thinking around business strategy.

As the Director of Open Source Desktop Strategy you will need to drive research and build holistic strategies across dynamic market segments like PCs, NetBooks, and mobile internet devices. You will be responsible for bringing our business strategy to life by discovering and sharing the market insights that set the foundation for our platform value dialogue with customers and the industry.

Nothing could say plainer that Microsoft now fears for the desktop. You don't appoint someone whose job is to lead a "global desktop competitive strategy" that embraces PCs, netbooks and mobile internet devices after years of assuming the desktop was yours forever unless you have a clear and vivid idea that there is a new and real threat in this sector. And you don't have to be a mind-reader to guess that Microsoft is thinking of GNU/Linux here.

The job would probably be quite attractive to people were it not for two killer responsibilities:

Create a rational set of proof points that promote Microsoft’s comparative value

Build a fact-based marketing plan that articulates the Windows Client value proposition to partners and customers

The problem is, of course, that there is no "rational set of proof points", and no facts on which to build a marketing plan. It will be interesting to see which masochist gets the job. I look forward to, er, analysing his or her attempts to square the circle. (Via Matthew Aslett.)

Anti-Social Networks

Although I've joined a couple of social networks, it's purely for the sake of some digital anthropology: I've never actually *used* them. In part, this is because I've always found their dynamics slightly unhealthy - this binary business (yes/no) of accepting someone as a "friend" seemed pretty adolescent, frankly.

Now Cory Doctorow has skewered and dissected the key problems in one of his well-written analyses:

For every long-lost chum who reaches out to me on Facebook, there's a guy who beat me up on a weekly basis through the whole seventh grade but now wants to be my buddy; or the crazy person who was fun in college but is now kind of sad; or the creepy ex-co-worker who I'd cross the street to avoid but who now wants to know, "Am I your friend?" yes or no, this instant, please.

It's not just Facebook and it's not just me. Every "social networking service" has had this problem and every user I've spoken to has been frustrated by it. I think that's why these services are so volatile: why we're so willing to flee from Friendster and into MySpace's loving arms; from MySpace to Facebook. It's socially awkward to refuse to add someone to your friends list -- but removing someone from your friend-list is practically a declaration of war. The least-awkward way to get back to a friends list with nothing but friends on it is to reboot: create a new identity on a new system and send out some invites (of course, chances are at least one of those invites will go to someone who'll groan and wonder why we're dumb enough to think that we're pals).

That's why I don't worry about Facebook taking over the net. As more users flock to it, the chances that the person who precipitates your exodus will find you increases. Once that happens, poof, away you go -- and Facebook joins SixDegrees, Friendster and their pals on the scrapheap of net.history.

Google's OpenSocial

Or should that be Open Social? - That's what a certain Marc Andreessen (now, where have I heard that name before?) calls it, and he should know:

My company, Ning, is participating in this week's launch of a new open web API called Open Social, which is being spearheaded by Google and joined by a wide range of partners including Google's own Orkut, LinkedIn, Hi5, Friendster, Salesforce.com, Oracle, iLike, Flixster, RockYou, and Slide.

In a nutshell, Open Social is an open web API that can be supported by two kinds of developers:

* "Containers" -- social networking systems like Ning, Orkut, LinkedIn, Hi5, and Friendster, and...

* "Apps" -- applications that want to be embedded within containers -- for example, the kinds of applications built by iLike, Flixster, Rockyou, and Slide.

This is the exact same concept as the Facebook platform, with two huge differences:

* With the Facebook platform, only Facebook itself can be a "container" -- "apps" can only run within Facebook itself. In contrast, with Open Social, any social network can be an Open Social container and allow Open Social apps to run within it.

* With the Facebook platform, app developers build to Facebook-proprietary languages and APIs such as FBML (Facebook Markup Language) and FQL (Facebook Query Language) -- those languages and APIs don't work anywhere other than Facebook -- and then the apps can only run within Facebook. In contrast, with Open Social, app developers can build to standard HTML and Javascript, and their apps can then run in any Open Social container.

What this shows, for the nth time, is that the future history of computing is about the race towards openness, and that the company that opens up the most - as in totally - wins. Google seems to get that, even if there are still a few dark corners of its soul that could do with some sunlight.

Opener Than Thou

What's interesting about the news that LinkedIn is going to "open up" is that it is happening as a direct result of competitive pressure:

He told me that over next 9 months LinkedIn would deliver APIs for developers, ostensibly to make it more of platform like Facebook, and create a way for users who spend more time socially in Facebook to get LlinkedIn notifications.

In other words, once somebody in a space starts opening up, its competitors simply have no choice but to follow if they want to keep the developers with them - absent unnatural constraints like lock-ins born of long-standing monopolistic behaviour....

Welcome to the World of Social Network Churn

Being an old fogey, I don't care much about all these new-fangled social networks (even LinkedIn seems overly, well, chummy for my tastes). But they're undeniably important, especially for those young people. However, I think we are about to enter a new phase for social networks that is going to leave a lot of people - investors in particular - feeling queasy.

Looking past the vertiginous growth rates mentioned here, the real killer is at the end:

Bebo’s traffic share rose threefold in the year to April while MySpace grew around two and a half times, Hitwise found, with the former poised to overtake MySpace this month, having ranked number one for the last three weeks. But it’s Facebook that now seems to be the hottest property. Anecdotally, many of my friends who had only just discovered MySpace have now upped and left for the more structured communication confines of Facebook, where they are better able to reconnect with old classmates and colleagues.

I predict that this fickleness will be a defining feature of a world that is predicated on being a memeber of what's hot, and not being a member of what's not.

Welcome to the world of social network churn.

All A-twitter about Twitter

Like many, I've been following Twitter with interest, if a certain bemusement: just what is the attraction of knowing that your mates are drinking a cup of coffee or taking the dog for a walk?

This post provides perhaps the best explanations so far as to why Twitter is important:

You use your social network as a filter, which helps both in scoping participation within a pull model of attention management, but also to Liz’s point that my friends are digesting the web for me and perhaps reducing my discovery costs. But the affordance within Twitter of both mobile and web, that not only lets Anil use it (he is Web-only) is what helps me manage attention overload. I can throttle back to web-only and curb interruptions, simply by texting off.

But will I use it? Not yet, although at some point I may dip a cyber-toe, as I have with LinkedIn: not because I need it, but because these social networks are indisputably an interesting trend.