You can check us out on OpenSocialSphere.com

Great presentation by Brad Fitzpatrick and David Recordon at the Web 2.0 Summit last month.

Written by guest writer Foley

3 words. Pandemic. Mullet. Beacon.

You’ll probably never see those 3 words in the same sentence, paragraph, or even book. Well, it is in one book - Facebook. Rumor has it those three words are codewords for Facebook’s newest money making scheme.

Facebook has a fairly diverse range of revenue stream, ranging from flyers, virtual gifts, polls, sponsored groups, negotiating an inflated valuation for investment money, etc… To add to the growing list is screwing Facebook application developers and stripping users of more privacy. How so? Here’s what the rumored code projects are.

Pandemic: Removing sponsored groups pages on Facebook.

Mullet: Replacing the sponsored groups page with more a more interactive page consisting of games and applications.

Beacon: Following a Facebook user’s footprint across the web in order to collect more information and serve more relevant ads.

False rumors, accusations, finger-pointing, and the classic case of he says/she says is undermining the true value of OpenSocial, that is to open up the web and making it more transparent.

The question is, was all of the rumors and he says/she says an elaborate PR strategy by all parties involved, or honest mistakes due to the OpenSocial news frenzy?

Examples? Sure:

Rumors

• Facebook Raises Another $500 Milion

Rumors from the Facebook funding frenzy had the company seeking $750 million from the get-go. And during yesterday’s almost content-free conference call, Facebook’s Owen Van Natta refused to rule out the notion that the company had raised more capital than MSFT’s.

• Facebook Rumors: Making Friends with More investors

Two hedge funds from New York have apparently jumped into the Facebook deal.We’ve got our ear to the ground to figure out who it is but each put in about $250 million–for $500 million total–at the same valuation as Microsoft Corp.

• Facebook Taps Into Hedge Funds For $500 Million More?
  

On the conference call yesterday, Microsoft exec Kevin Johnson implied there might be other investors involved when he said, “If you look at this round of financing they are doing that we are in for $240 million . . .”

Rumors Squashed

By far the most insightful and exciting story (IMHO) about/related to OpenSocial came from Michael Krigsman of ZDNet. Michael explained how Robert Scoble was able to share news and information from the OpenSocial press conference through twitter. I highly recommend reading Michael’s recount of the hidden and improvised OpenSocial press conference.

Bear in mind, all this was performed by individuals using free software, with no infrastructure beyond an ordinary Internet connection.

This provocative set of events arose completely spontaneously, rooted in opportunity and circumstance, and offers a glimpse of how information will be shared and consumed in the future.

The web is better when it’s social

The web is more interesting when you can build apps that easily interact with your friends and colleagues. But with the trend towards more social applications also comes a growing list of site-specific APIs that developers must learn.

OpenSocial provides a common set of APIs for social applications across multiple websites. With standard JavaScript and HTML, developers can create apps that access a social network’s friends and update feeds. (via code.google.com/apis/opensocial/)

Can OpenSocial attract a new crop of developers who will shift focus from the current simple, cute toy apps to more advance apps?

After weeding through countless stories about OpenSocial on Techmeme, Wired gave a small glimpse of hope into the future of social networks that is beyond biting your friends or turning them into zombies.

In fact, the company is going to demo one such app called the Conference Calendar at a Google event this week. According to Nash, the new app will automatically know what industry you work in (based on your LinkedIn profile) and subsequently spit out a series of relevant upcoming conferences based on this info.

Once again, Techcrunch got the scoop on the OpenSocial alliance that has gotten a lot more interesting, and bigger in terms of user base, with the addition of Myspace, Bebo and SixApart. (See a Video demo of Flixster integrated into a Myspace profile - via zdnet)

Sure, it’s easy to say that the addition of Myspace, the behemoth social network, will give the OpenSocial alliance a fighting chance against Facebook’s torrid growth, but will the infusion of thousands of apps be good for these partners?

The news about Myspace as the new partner has been echoed throughout the blogosphere, but I find the most interesting analysis and insights coming from the commenters.

Here are some of the comments that I find interesting as it comes from people who can careless about the PR battle between the participating partners, but care more about the value that these social networks are providing them.

Whatever happened to users/customers first?

As expected, Orkut will allow developers to start developing apps on their sandbox tonight. While Ning and Hi5 have shown screenshots of apps (iLike and Flixster) integrated on their networks, both networks and the other partners are not ready to let developers access their “container” until later this year and possibly early next year.

Resources for developers about OpenSource and the Orkut container can be found here: code.google.com

 

Ning’s co-founder, Marc Andreessen, provided a more in depth look into the new OpenSocial API by way of a screencast demonstrating on how Flixster and iLike, two popular apps on Facebook, exist on Ning.

The screencast shows Flixster and iLike being used on three different and unrelated types of social networks using the Ning platform. The three social networks (tudiabetes, askaninja, dubpages) used in the screencast showed the flexibility of Ning’s platform as well as how the apps blended seamlessly into the different types of niche social networks found on Ning.

An important point coming from the screencast is that the applications won’t go live until the end of the year and possibly early next year. I’m not sure if this is the case for all participating OpenSocial partners, but I’m betting that Orkut will have the applications available before the other partners. Considering Facebook already has over 7000 apps and a six months head start, at this point does it matter which OpenSocial partner will launch the apps first?