I’m in L.A. for DARPA’s Cannonball Run-style robot race, an attempt to simulate in machines the ineffable human emotion we know as “road rage.” TG Daily has excellent video of some of the bot-crunching action.
Anyway, I’m too busy and important to think clever thoughts about the incredibly costly and complicated slapfight going on between Google and Facebook (with Microsoft and MySpace acting as seconds, like in an olde-tymey duel). But apparently Josh Quittner isn’t. You should read his coverage on his blog, the Netly News, for a smart take on what’s going on. Josh — I call him by his first name, because I used to work for him, and am currently beating him at Scrabulous — breaks down Facebook’s potential responses to Google’s OpenSocial “standard” for developing apps for social networks: ignore, capitulate, or something in between.
Personally I think OpenSocial is an incredibly brilliant move on Google’s part — a classic example of Googlian bigthink. Don’t fight the war, make the guns, and make sure everybody else keeps fighting.
