In social networks we do not waste time - half a year in battle gets you a veteran’s badge.

Facebook has introduced it’s open platfrom about 6 months ago. Since than more that 70,000 developers lined up under its flags. About a month ago Google introduced its OpenSocial that is a direct competitor with Facebook’s platfrom. Small company with a lot of users an developers against a big company with not so many users and no developers. The stage is set.

The biggest threat to Facebook application platfrom and applications running on it is the Facebook itself. Or is it a benefit? Anyway, Facebook is a Microsoft of social networks. As long as people are on Facebook (willing to use Windows), applications are fine (application.exe are fine).
Google OpenSocial is a … no, it is not a Mac. It’s Linux. Open ( it’s even called open! ), container independent, not-so-evil as proprietary competitors. A lot of hype around it, a lot of flag waving and so on. But not so many real users and certainly not so many developers. But a lot of quality PR.

Classical example. Everyone will get a market share and probably Google will eventually get it all as Google usually do. But today Facebook and Bebo broke the rules of the game. Facebook licensed its platform to be used on other social network sites.

Maybe Facebook is not like Microsoft after all?