Facebook open-sources developer platform

Facebook recently announced that it has open-sourced a significant part of its Facebook platform, including most of the code that runs Facebook Platform plus implementations of many of the most-used methods and tags. This is a good move but it may have come a little too late for Facebook.

This is an anti-incumbent move what with Google having already established OpenSocial as a strong common platform candidate. With its more popular developer platform, Facebook was in a great position to create a loyal and thriving developer/application ecosystem. Instead, it is OpenSocial that boasts of a strong club membership with MySpace, Yahoo, AOL, Hi5 etc. Bebo is probably one of the exceptions that support both FaceBook and OpenSocial. While ostentatiously, Facebook wants "to give back to the developer community", it is more of a desperate attempt at playing catch-up with Google. The fact that it did not have any "launch" partners to go with is testament to the urgency with which Facebook scrambled to get this initiative going.

Despite its late entry to the party, it is still a significant move from Facebook. After all, it is one of the biggest social platforms out there before OpenSocial came along. This move attempts to provide the required counter-balance to OpenSocial which did not start out as auspiciously as Google would have liked even though it beat Facebook in the initial sprint. Too many teething problems marred its beginning stages. There are still a lot of open questions around OpenSocial and some of its members have conflicting priorities with the Google partnership. In any case, this move forces both the companies to improve their platforms to become the platform of choice.

How are developers likely to receive this? Facebook loyalists will no doubt rejoice but a lot of developers will now also be torn between two platforms. It doesn't make sense for developers to have competing platforms for the same applications. Developers should be worried about the delivery of value through applications rather than getting bogged down with compatibility issue or having to maintain multiple code-bases.

If Facebook doesn't keep the developers interested and OpenSocial steadily gains acceptance, it is likely that OpenSocial will become the de-facto standard. With that, Google moves one more step closer to creating an internet operating system.

In the midst of all I find one trend heartening - the walled-gardens are slowly giving in.