Three Minds On Digital Marketing @ Organic

1. Marketers / Developers

Client buy in
With the hosts and developers list growing, it will be easier for interactive agencies to encourage their clientele to jump on the bandwagon

Decreases the bottomline
Shorter development times, broader reach, and easier implementations, means lower costing branded widget. Those extra funds can be reallocated towards developing creative, strategy or richer functionality

Best practices
Increased activity within OpenSocial means a sped up evolution rate: survival of the fittest, mistakes learned, best, etc will start circulating at a faster rate than the current Facebook platform

Context and optimization
While creating widespread content easily is an advantage, the ability to optimize content based on the particular audience is invaluable. Open social allows marketers to test messages against social sites that speak more appropriately to the youth, moms, music buffs, the Hispanic community, international audiences, professionals, etc.

Lowers the learning curve
Phil Dokas, an Organic Interface Engineer, describes it best:

“To build out a community idea these days it's quickly becoming necessary to write for multiple interfaces and multiple markup languages to cover the majority of the bases. For developers, the promise of write once, deploy everywhere comes back to the table. Minor front end changes will of course be necessary, but restyling your content is a far, far cry from having to redevelop methods of accessing databases and bringing information to the browser.”

2. End Users

Improved user experience
If Plaxo Pulse is any example, the focus seems to be on activities that bring more social functionality to the platforms. Sure, there will be marketing applications, some good and some bad. But, as stated before, a platform with a lower learning curve should err on the side of better thought out and richer functioning widgets

Bringing the fun to me
No longer will niche communities be left out of the game as far as applications go. Users can stay with the platform they prefer to, with the friends they already have, and not be penalized for it. That is, of course, so long as it is an OpenSocial platform.

A commenter on ReadWriteWeb points out why OpenSocial ultimately won’t be the FaceBook killer that the blogosphere is claiming it might to be:

"People didn't join Facebook to add apps to their profiles, and they're not going to migrate elsewhere for the sake of a different API. No one is going to think, 'Well, my friends are all on Facebook, but Orkut lets me help some third-rate startup monetize its assets by scattering random widgetjunk across my public profile... so it's Orkut for me!'" - Roger Benningfield

3. Google

Content ownership? World domination?
Some people remain skeptical about OpenSocial. Google has a lot to gain by bringing all of these powerful social companies under their umbrella and forcing them to use the Google Gadget development platform (which is “open” and standards based but still controlled by Google).

In the same ReadWriteWeb article that the comment above comes from, the author, Marshall Kirkpatrick, points out:

“Google has control over a frightening amount of information about our world, from maps and email to genetics and the world's libraries. Tell me it's a brave new, open social world and Google is leading the charge and I can't help but be skeptical. They make great apps but I won't accept the brain implant no matter how open Google assures me it will be.”

But, if Google’s best practices in social design document is any indication, they seem to have an underlying motive to improve the social world we live in, and not just dominate it.

4. So what about Facebook?

Does this mean that Facebook is out of the game? Well, the verdict is still out. It is possible that Facebook could put out a press release tomorrow stating their adoption of the OpenSocial platform, and then the answer would be a definite “no”. But even if they decide to go head to head against the MySpace/Google pairing, the fact is, so long as there is a good sized audience on Facebook, people will be developing applications for it.

And while it is possible that Facebook will become more of the afterthought by marketers, the “nice to have”, as the OpenSocial universe expands and grows, the social world is still excited about Facebook and once the OpenSocial hype tapers off, they still will be.

Marta Strickland