Well hello, Google

Well well well, here I am with my foot in my mouth. Shilton of Christmas past says Google missed out on quite an opportunity with facebook, I believe I was mad Google couldn't "man up". Seems as though google let facebook slip between it's gargantuan fingers because it was working on an even bigger project. They're going to make a universal standard, OpenSocial, will be used on social networking sites such as Orkut, LinkedIn, hi5, friendster, Plaxo, and Ning (edit 5/11/07: myspace too!). They're trying to pull software developers away from writing programs that will only work on facebook. Seems as though the little guys are teaming up against mighty facebook. I wonder if this will affect the popularity of facebook. The NYT article does doubt the productivity of this move,

Developers may not see the advantage to writing programs that run across such remarkably different networks as, for example, LinkedIn, which caters to business professionals, and hi5, which is popular in Central America. For Google, the effort could breathe new life into Orkut, which is popular in Brazil and other countries, but not in the United States

True, as a US college student I haven't been too persuaded to join any social networking site besides facebook, myspace and linkedin.. though I know of quite a few people who still use friendster from pre-facebook times. Even in Australia (where I've been studying for the past semester) I've only run into people who use facebook and myspace, though they are almost american when it comes to that kind of thing. Nevertheless, the possibilities are quite vast here- google, you amaze me. As soon as I think you've gotten yourself into trouble you show me that you're still on your game. Good on ya. As the picture shows, I still love you google, we just hit a rough patch, consider it our first fight. *kisses*