social networks

Closed is the new open

By Josh Quittner

One of the rallying cries of the Web 2.0 movement, during its sensational rise over the past five years, is openness. Open systems (Linux, Wikipedia, any phone you can hack from T-Mobile) are good. Closed systems (Windows, The Wall Street Journal Online, any locked-down cell phone you buy from Verizon) are bad.

The basic idea is that the Web itself, that Shiva of the business world, is built MORE

Andreessen's solution to the writer's strike

By Josh Quittner

Marc Andreessen for president. Seriously, I love watching him think. Even when I disagree with his conclusions, I always learn something worthwhile. His heart is in the right place and his brain is without peer. Would someone please start a Facebook group for this?

In today's post, he argues that if the Hollywood studios don't capitulate to the writers they will effectively destroy their business -- and perhaps, MORE

Facebook Ads: What will the kids think?

By Lindsay Blakely

Mark Zuckerberg and his Facebook team spent an entire afternoon Tuesday explaining their new ad strategy to an audience of big-name corporate advertisers and Manhattan media. But as a series of high-profile executives from Blockbuster (BBI), Verizon (VZ), Coca-Cola (KO) and other new Facebook advertisers paraded across the stage, no one talked much about the Achilles heel of Facebook Ads: Facebook members.

Facebook is letting them control what MORE

Big advertisers are Facebook's new friends

By Jessi Hempel

A hush fell over a packed sixth-floor room this afternoon in a nondescript Manhattan warehouse as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg took the stage. "Once every 100 years, the way that media works fundamentally changes," he said haughtily. So began one of the most highly anticipated launch events this fall as Zuckerberg unveiled Facebook Ads, a three-part strategy to help advertisers better connect to customers on the social networking MORE

Social networking developers: In the catbird seat or dog food?

By Michael V. Copeland

It has been an interesting few days watching Silicon Valley's most powerful company, Google, fend off technology's latest adolescent darling, Facebook. That of course, is what Google's (GOOG) OpenSocial initiative is all about, pitting its new-born social networking platform against Facebook's six-month-old social networking platform. And while these two companies battle it out for the opportunity to capture our time with the useful as well as MORE

MySpace and Bebo join Google's OpenSocial team

By Lindsay Blakely

Google today announced two big new partners in its battle to make social networks more open -- MySpace and Bebo.

When news surfaced Tuesday of Google's (GOOG) OpenSocial alliance, MySpace (NWS) and Bebo were conspicuously absent from the list of partners joining the effort to create common standards for social networking applications. So, not surprisingly, was top-tier network Facebook.

OpenSocial will allow developers to build widgets that work MORE

The battle for the soul of social networking

By Lindsay Blakely

Google's new OpenSocial initiative is just the opening shot in what promises to be a long fight with Facebook.

The OpenSocial alliance, which seeks to create common standards for social networking applications, has so far signed up Google's (GOOG) Orkut social network -- it's big in Brazil -- as well as Hi5, LinkedIn, Ning, Friendster and business software makers Salesforce and Oracle.

"I view this as Version 1.0 of MORE

Google takes on Facebook

By Josh Quittner

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. And if you can't join 'em, get all your friends to band together—and gang up on them!

In a move that some Silicon Valley pundits are deriding as desperate, Google (GOOG) has unveiled a plan to fight back against social network Facebook. A dozen companies, including social networks LinkedIn, Ning, hi5 and Google's own social network Orkut, have aligned together MORE

Is Facebook worth $15 billion?

By Josh Quittner

With Microsoft (MSFT) buying a minority share that values Facebook at $15 billion, hyperbole became reality. Or did it? The answer to that question turns on whether the social network is worth what Microsoft paid.

And that depends on whether you believe Facebook is just the latest online fad—or whether, as Facebookies believe, the social network is building the next, grand computing platform. (A platform is geek for a MORE

Microsoft wins the hand of Facebook

"There's a lot we're going to do together," said Kevin Johnson, president of Microsoft's Platforms & Services division.