It was only three weeks ago that I wrote a piece on how Google, tired of playing games with Facebook started to roll out features whose data-collecting activity was reminiscent of Facebook's Social Graph. It's taken this long for Facebook to retaliate.
Using the very public forum of its f8 developers' conference Facebook announced a raft of new developments which in terms of functionality devolve down to a new music service, through Spotify, social sharing through a new user interface (now in Beta) and a new platform. From a technology point of view this is nothing Google+ has not already got in waiting with Google Music, new sharing features and about 300 planned changes to its platform over the next 12 months.
However, what really Facebook announced was that it was also creating an Open Graph which would allow its Social Graph (which is closed) to interact with data on other sites and permit them to socialise within Facebook's walls, it was introducing a raft of social plugins which were designed to help socialise the web by being easily implementable in websites and it was changing its core platform so that developers (a group Facebook had successfully woo-ed, in the past, and then had managed to lose) would now be able to create third party apps and never have to worry about constant changes to the Facebook platform, derailing their programming.
These three announcements are nothing less than a declaration of war. Let me explain. In the battle between Google and Facebook, the former has sought to index the web and offered users the tools to socialise it (through Google+) and the latter has sought to bring the web inside its walls. Google has used its search dominance to help it achieve its goals while Facebook has used its membership base which has now reached the 800 million mark.
Without search Google has nothing. Without members Facebook is powerless. The old dynamic then was: Facebook using its masses to drag content inside Fortress FB while Google circled outside and expanded its reach everywhere. For a while there was a stalemate. Google ruled the web at large, dominating search and online advertising. Facebook, encouraged more and more of its members to share, introduced the 'Like' button and tried to make its space the one that counted the most.
As long as Google was not 'getting' social and was failing in its attempts to introduce a rival to Facebook, the latter was content to amble along its autocratic, steadily growing way and let things be. Then Google+ came along and changed everything. By providing Google+ members with the tools to socialise every part of the web Google threatened to, in time, make Facebook irrelevant. Yes, your friends might be hanging out there gawking at pictures, but when it came to business, content, search and real value on the web, Google was still king and its Google+ network was its crown.
The Facebook announcement however is a game changer. With the change to its Social Graph to expand into an Open Graph which can be linked to any website with a simple line of code and which can be expanded again through the new functionality of the 'Like' Button, Facebook has opened the way to creative alliances.
IMDB, an early adopter of this, for example, will now have on every page a Facebook 'Like' Button. The new Facebook 'Like' Button will, through an enhanced Facebook user profile called Timeline (now in Beta), allow everyone of your friends know which film you Liked on IMDB and will create a powerful social marketing tool for IMDB which, until now, it had been unable to leverage. Essentially, the 'Social Graph' of IMDB will, through the Open Graph Protocol, be linked to Facebook's Social Graph, enhancing the latter and helping the former.
Add to this the fact that Facebook is rolling out a raft of Social Plugins which are aimed squarely at website owners so that they can socialise the experience of those who visit their sites and what you get is nothing less than an offensive launched by Facebook finally coming out from behind its barricades.
Whereas in the past it was content to let Google roam the web while it focused on attracting members and getting them networked, now it wants website owners to join it in what must appear no less than a carve-up of the web.
There are two competing ideologies here: In the red, yellow, blue and green corner is Google, with the belief that the only way to handle data is to have an open web, transparent to all, where taxonomy (i.e. the algorithmic indexing of information through its search engine) is enhanced by folksonomy (as evidenced through the use of the Google +1 Button and Google+). Google focuses on the end-user. In the blue corner stands Facebook which believes that the only information that matters is the one people share with each other and wants to get as many people as possible to share as much information as possible within its walls. Facebook focuses on Facebook.
With its new offensive these walls, once hermetically sealed, now become semi-permeable allowing massive, one-way sharing. In the IMDB example, I used above, for instance, Facebook would learn every film I liked and be able to use that information to market to me content, services and ads, while IMDB would only benefit by gaining access to my network of friends. Now add to that example the ability to synchronise my Likes across genres which include, music, books and places I like and you can see that what Facebook is building is a synchronised, up-to-the-minute real time web, where everything I do is shared with all my friends and informs every offer and relevant piece of content I see and it happens not just within the walls of Facebook, where my Profile is, but anywhere I go on the web and there is a Like Button or a Facebook Social Plugin.
The vision, in its magnitude and audacity, is nothing less than breath-taking. To help pull it off Facebook has gone into a lot of trouble to woo back all the developers it has shunned, alienated and outraged, in the expectation that they will now start to build, again, the social apps it needs to help its fight.
The web landscape right now is shaping up into a war between two giants. If you work online you need to be in bed with one, or the other (and possible both?) in order to get anywhere. Things are far from settled however. Facebook, has huge hurdles to overcome in terms of programming and getting its membership base to accept its new 'face'. Google too, has to move a little faster and accelerate its own development plans for Google+.
Two facts remain: First, social, as Zuckerberg correctly suggested, is soon going to become the default mode of the web. Second, the winner will get to determine how we use the web and our data in the 21st century.
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