OpenSocial: Google Opens Up Social Network Platforms

Here's news that's pleasing and intriguing: Google is about to announce a Web standard called OpenSocial designed to let every social network support that wants to enable the sort of Web-based social applications that have helped made Facebook the talk of the Net in recent months. As far as I can tell, Google isn't saying anything until tomorrow, but Marc Andreessen, whose Ning will be one of the first social networks to support OpenSocial has a long and interesting blog post about what he thinks it all means.

Facebook and Myspace aren't involved in OpenSocial, but otherwise, the initial companies who are climbing aboard include an impressive bunch of social networks and social application providers, including Ning, LinkedIn, Hi5, Friendster, Plaxo, Google's Orkut, iLike, and Slide.

Andreessen is bullish on OpenSocial...and after reading his take, so am I. OpenSocial will let any social network that supports it run any application written to support it, and OpenSocial apps use plain old HTML and JavaScript. That's what ordinary Web sites are built with, so it shouldn't be hard for sites to build OpenSocial apps based upon functionality they've already got.

That's a major shift from the world of Facebook apps, which involves writing apps using special Facebook programming techniques that'll only run within Facebook. That walled-garden, proprietary approach has been compared to the early AOL. And there's an ugly scenario in which other social networks might decide to respond by building their own proprietary platforms. Shades of the era of AOL, CompuServe, and Prodigy.

But if OpenSocial catches on, we'd fast-forward directly to a world in which everybody wrote their stuff to work with everything else. Assuming it's feature-rich enough to enable powerful applications, I can't imagine how anyone could argue that that isn't the best scenario for everybody on the planet who uses social networks. And given how quickly and thoroughly the open standards of the Web crushed the AOLs and CompuServes of the world, it seems inevitable that an open approach to social platforms will prevail over the proprietary stuff.

What OpenSocial doesn't seem to be is a way to put all your friends into one social network that spans across every site you use. If I'm understanding it correctly, you'd still have one bunch of friends at LinkedIn and another at Plaxo--it's just that you'd be able to use the same social applications at both sites.

The fact that OpenSocial doesn't involve anybody having control over all your social network data should alleviate any concerns over Google's involvement here. Unlike Google Base or Google Print or even Gmail, OpenSocial doesn't involve Google building a gigantic repository of data which only it controls. Actually, it's a step in the opposite direction--something which, if it's widely adopted, could let us all use the Web applications we want wherever we want them.

On the other hand, OpenSocial also doesn't do anything to give users any greater control over their list of buddies--that information remains proprietary to whatever network or networks you use. On that standpoint, it seems to be neutral. Dave Winer, for one, thinks that that control over data is what OpenSocial should have been about.

I persist in thinking that not only has the defining social-network application not been written yet, but most of the ones that do exist are kind of stupid. But I'm upbeat about the basic notion of every Web site being a platform that helps people intermingle. And if OpenSocial catches on, it'll help that happen a lot more quickly...

I Have a New Favorite Web Browser: Flock

More than two years ago, I blogged about the preview version of Flock, a browser, built with Mozilla Firefox at its core, with a social bent. I said it showed promise and said I'd keep an eye on it.

And then...the Flock folks failed to release a final version and I sort of forgot about it. Two years later, this browser still isn't available in final form. But I've been using the iteration billed at the beta version of Flock 1.0--available for download here--for the past few days. And I'm so impressed that I've done something I didn't see myself anytime soon: I've dumped Firefox as my primary gateway to the Web. For now, I'm using Flock as my default browser on both my desktop Vista machine and my MacBook portable, and thoroughly enjoying the experience.

Two years ago, when the Flock people started talking about the notion of a social browser, they might have been a little ahead of their time. Today, the whole dang Web has a heavy social bent, and this current version of Flock is significantly different and better than the one I tried back in 2005.

A few of the features that make Flock a strikingly different browser from IE, plain-vanilla Firefox, or Opera:

Facebook integration. If you're addicted to Facebook--and I am, at least for the moment--Flock's Facebook-related features alone might make it worth switching from whatever browser you use. You get a sidebar with links to all your friends, messages, invites, your status, and other key Facebook stuff; it sites to the left of the main browser window and lets you keep tabs on your Facebook life without having to go to Facebook. Using the horizontal Media Bar, you can also browse your pals' Facebook photos.

Here's a look at the Facebook sidebar:

I can think of ways Flock's Facebook integration could be even better--such as by giving you access to your news feed or supporting third-party Facebook apps--but even as is, it's extremely cool.

Flickr and YouTube integration. You can upload photos to Flickr and use the Media Bar to browse your Flickr friends' streams (and, for that matter, anybody's Flickr streams. including your own) using features built into the browser. Quick links let you e-mail links to photos or embed images in blogs, and you can Favorite streams so you can return to them in the Media Bar without having to go to Flickr. YouTube doesn't have the integrated uploading, but it gets similar browsing and sharing features.

Here's a peek at a Flickr stream in the Media Bar:

Better bookmarks. Flock's Favorites might be the nicest bookmarks in any browser, with the ability to add tags and descriptions, plus the built-in ability to save your favorite sites to Del.icio.us so you can get to 'em from any browser on any computer.

Web clipboard. This feature lets you drag images, text, and links into the sidebar for later use:

Blogging. You can post directly to blogs on TypePad, Movable Type, WordPress, Blogger, and other platforms. The editor's a bit basic in some ways, but it's not bad overall and you can drag items from the Web Clipboard to put them in your posts.

RSS. Flock has a nice built-in RSS reader that lets you organize feeds into folders. I like it a lot more than Firefox's Live Bookmarks.

My World. A sort of built-in home page gives you quick access to sites you've recently visited and favorite feeds and media streams. It also includes a Yahoo search box. (Flock's business model involves getting referral fees from Yahoo, much as Mozilla makes millions of dollars from Google for the searches people do on the default Firefox home page. Here it is:

One of the best things about Flock is that it's basically a souped-up variant of Firefox--so it's full of familiar and useful features as well as new ones. Flock says that "most" Firefox extensions will work properly in Flock: I found that several worked well, including the Google Toolbar, Greasemonkey, and the Meebo extension. One video downloading extension didn't seem to work; Flock's site says you should get a warning if an extension isn't Flock-friendly, but I didn't in this case.

As much as I'm enjoying using Flock, one fear is nagging in the back of my mind: Firefox 3 is on its way, and it's possible it'll have new features I'll want which won't be available in Flock. (Of course, Flock may get 'em eventually--but given the leisurely pace of Flock development so far, it might take awhile.)

And this beta is still a real beta: I've run into a few instances of things not working as they should (such as not being able to search my Facebook friends in the Windows version of Flock). None, however, have been showstoppers that sent me scrambling back to Firefox.

Bugs and all, the Flock beta is an impressive piece of work. I'd love to see this browser upstart thrive--and I hope thatit'll evolve and improve at a more rapid clip than it's managed so far...

Facebook Apps: Fascinating and Boring at the Same Time

I'm still at the Web 2.0 Summit, where one of this morning's highlights was a panel on Facebook applications, moderated by my friend Dave McClure with participants from companies, such as Slide and iLike, that build services that live within the Facebook experience.

Dave began the panel by declaring that he thought the emergence of the Facebook platform was the most significant development in tech in the past half-decade. I'm not sure if I agree, but it's a defensible position--and there are only a handful of other contenders for that honor.

By letting anyone with a good idea and some programming chops add new functionality to its service, Facebook unleashed a truly big idea. Over the past few years, every significant Web site has become an application; if they all become platforms for third-party creativity over the next few years, we'll trace it all back to Facebook's big bang.

And yet...

Some of the panel discussion centered around a blog post by the Wall Street Journal's Kara Swisher in which she mocked the current crop of Facebook apps as being stupid kid stuff. Kara's harder on 'em than I am--I can't slam Facebook apps such as iLike and Where I've Been too hard given how much time I've spent with them.

But it's completely true that I've never seen a Facebook app that's more than mildly diverting. I haven't seen any that don't pretty much do something you can do elsewhere, except within Facebook and with access to your Facebook friends. If there's a killer app of Facebook apps--the one that's the of what Visicalc was to the PC or Yahoo was to the Web--I haven't come across it yet.

How come? Well, for one thing, the Facebook platform is less than five months old--it deserves at least a little time to mature. (Visicalc appeared about four years into the PC revolution; the Web was around three years old when Yahoo launched.) And Facebook's roots as a place for college students to hang out probably encourage silly apps rather than life-changing ones. As the average age of Facebook users ticks upward, the range of apps may get richer.

So ultimately, I'm almost as excited by the Facebook platform as Dave is--even though I'm not particularly excited by any of the apps it's made possible. I suspect a "Visicalc of Facebook" killer app will show up at some point, and I'm looking forward to using it--even though I have no idea what it might be...

Web 2.0: Nokia's N810 Internet Tablet

I'm at the opening afternoon at the Web 2.0 Summit--always one of the year's best tech conferences--at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco. So far, we've heard from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Google's Marissa Mayer, and Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen. But the closest thing to a product launch so far came when Nokia's Anssi Vanjoki talked about the company's N810 Internet Tablet, a Linux-powered device that's bigger than a cell phone but smaller than even the smallest notebok.

Here's a photo of it, swiped from Engadget:

As its model name suggests, the N810 ain't revolutionary--it's an upgrade to the N800, a tablet that Nokia launched back in January. Like that model, it has a nice big touchscreen, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GPS, and while it's not a cell phone, it can talk to them for connectivity and can do VoIP calls. But it adds one feature that makes it instantly much more interesting to me, and probably to other folks, too: a slide-out keyboard.

(The last keyboard-less computing device I truly liked was the Palm Tungsten that was my last old-style PDA...and since then, I've only really been interested in ones that do tactile QWERTY in some form, such as my HTC TyTN II phone. I'm not sure if that makes me a fuddy-duddy, or makes me a pragmatist, or whether it's just that nobody's figured out a genuinely great QWERTYless user interface...)

The initial bloggy reaction to the N810 seems to be pretty positive, which is intriguing given that it in some ways reminds me of a tinier version of Palm's ill-fated critical fiasco the Foleo, at a simular price ($479). I appear to have been the one tech pundit on the planet who was willing to give Foleo a chance, so I'm intrigued by the N810, too...

Firefox on Phones: Coming Eventually!

For quite some time, I've been confounded by the fact that my favorite browser--Firefox, naturally--hasn't been available on what's fast become one of the most important devices I use to get online: my phone.

I switch phones so frequently that my coworkers make fun of me. So I've tried a bunch of tiny browsers, from Pocket Internet Explorer to the iPhone's Safari to Blackberry Browser to Blazer, the archaic one that's still preloaded on Palm-based devices. Not even Safari on the iPhone makes me as happy as Firefox does every time I launch it on a Windows machine or a Mac.

So I'm pleased by today's news that Mozilla says it's getting serious about bringing the Firefox experience to mobile devices. Mike Schroepfer, the company's VP of engineering, has the details in a post on his blog. The announcement is mostly big-picturey stuff--it's not even clear yet what platforms mobile Firefox will run on, or when it'll be available. (Schroepfer says it'll be some time after Firefox 3 ships.) And the company says that rather than trying to rewrite the browser from scratch, it's focusing on building a browser that can easily be ported to next-generation phones which have a fair amount of memory--which, while it sounds like a smart strategy, is also one that might prevent it from running on most current phones and push the browser's release even further into the future.

The two things that are most exciting about Schroepfer's post:

1) He speaks--again, in broad terms--about a scenario where your bookmarks, history, and other bits of information from your desktop iteration of Firefox on your phone. The whole notion of that stuff living on a local PC, as it usually does, is feeling increasingly archaic--I can't wait for the day when it's all there, no matter what device I'm doing my browsing on. And it should all be done wirelessly and transparently, rather than requiring synching of the sort you can do to get bookmarks onto Windows Mobile handhelds and iPhones.

2) He also says that Mozilla's goal is to build a mobile Firefox that can run extensions. If that happens, it should instantly make the browser the most powerful, customizable one available on phones.

Side note: At the moment, I do my browsing-by-phone using an HTC TyTN II phone, a wonderful, wonderfully powerful device that's also available, in slightly different form, as the AT&T Tilt. Both versions run Windows Mobile 6 and therefore offer Pocket Internet Explorer, a browser that looks pretty sad compared to Safari on the iPhone. But I use Pocket IE with Reensoft's PiePlus, a spectacular piece of software that essentially turns Microsoft's browser into the app it should have been in the first place, with tabbed browsing, an excellent full-screen view, and lots of other features. If you use IE on a phone, you need PiePlus.

But I'm still looking forward to the day when I can dump it for a really good mobile incarnation of Firefox...

Internet Explorer 7's Slow Start

Wanna download IE 7? Until today, you've had to jump through Windows Genuine Advantage's annoying validation hoop to prove your copy of Windows is legit. But in a rare instance of Microsoft loosening its copy-protection reins, the company has announced that you'll be able to get IE 7 without validation. Good for them--and good news for anyone thinks that WGA is an affront to the millions of people who pay for their copies of Windows.

Gregg Keizer's story reports that Microsoft says it's doing so to bring IE 7's better security to as many people as possible, thereby protecting the entire Windows ecosystem. In other words, by allowing people with pirated copies of Windows to upgrade, it'll obstruct viruses, worms, and other Internet attacks from spreading as rapidly as if those people used the older, less secure IE 6.

Keizer's article also raises the question of whether the new rules for IE 7 downloads are a play to increase IE's market share versus its popular open-source rival, Firefox. I don't know whether they are, and you've got to think that Microsoft probably wouldn't say they were in so many words, even if that were true. But the idea got me wondering: How fast has the world accepted IE 7 compared to IE 6, which was released with Windows XP back in 2001?

Reliable browser market share numbers are notoriously hard to come by, but I do have ready access to one source of reasonably reliable data: The traffic figures for visitors to PCWorld.com. And they show that at our site, at least, IE 7 has been relatively slow to catch on compared to its predecessor.

Of course, it's a very different browser market than it was back in 2001. Back then, it looked like IE was on its way to a truly monopolistic stranglehold on Web surfers: At PCWorld.com, more than eighty percent of visitors used some flavor of IE, and the once-mighty Netscape was at about six percent usage and slipping. In other words, IE had around fourteen times the share of its next nearest competitor.

Today, there's healthy browser competition here at our site: A little over 60 percent of visitors use various versions of IE, and 30 percent use Firefox. Safari and Opera are far behind but on the chart, with about four and two percent usage, respectively.

Given the rise of Firefox, it would have been very unlikely that IE 7 could have grabbed market share as quickly as IE 6 did back in the day, no matter how good it was. And indeed, it doesn't seem to be hurting Firefox, at least at PCWorld.com: Firefox's share has continued to grow even in the months after IE 7's release.

But here's another way of looking at things: How fast has IE 7 caught on purely in terms of stealing market share from earlier versions of IE?

We're now about eleven months past the release of IE 7. If you look at the combined total of PCWorld.com visitors who visit us via IE 7 or 6, about 54 percent of them use IE 7, and 46 percent still use IE 6. That's not too far from a fifty-fifty split.

Back in 2002, when about the same amount of time had elapsed after IE 6's release as has now passed since IE 7's, there were three versions of IE with meaningful market share: 6, 5.5, and 5. And 66 percent of visitors who used IE used version 6, compared to 34 percent who used either 5.5 or 5.

Bottom line: PCWorld.com visitors who use Internet Explorer have been slower to adopt IE 7 than they were to upgrade to IE 6. Some of them, of course, have abandoned IE altogether for Firefox or another browser; others may have decided to stick with IE 6, either through personal preference or lethargy.

Even if Microsoft doesn't care about market share versus Firefox, it's admitting that its decision to make IE 7 an easier download is about increasing the number of people in the world who use that browser. I'm going to keep an eye on our site stats in the months to come to see if there's any evidence that the move has resulted in an IE 7 adoption uptick. If there is--or even if there isn't--I'll report back here with further analysis.

Meanwhile, here's an unscientific little poll: