If there is any doubt as to what the battleground after search will be, I don’t think it exists for many people anymore – Social Networking is the easiest way for advertisers to push preference based ads to users because the users give them exactly what they want advertised. No tracking clicks, no ambiguity. So with that in mind Google’s agreement with MySpace for the later to join the former’s development group using the OpenSocial API. Facebook isn’t one of the group that is part of the party that include “serious” style sites like Linkedin and Ning. But with Google bringing Myspace on, it’s essentially sandwiched the users of Facebook – when they are younger, they may be more likely to use MySpace and then when they get older, move through Facebook and onto Ning or Linkedin. If this is the case, users will likely be the ones to pressure Facebook to join, even though M$ (though Google’s no slouch in the $$ either) owns a bit of Facebook, it’s not enough to steer it toward another development platform should the tide turn that way… of course, this is all just from what I’ve seen or read. For more on this – check out Spark.
For me, I think this is good, because now that there is a major player on OpenSocial, it makes it easier to develop applications that can help any social network site act as a PLE.
As an early prediction for next year – I’m thinking that at least one of the mid sized social networks is going to get swallowed.
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