Mary Jo Foley has a delightful post entitled Are all ‘open’ Web platforms created equal? where she wonders why there is more hype around the Facebook platform, Google’s muched hyped attempt to counter it on November 5th and other efforts that Anil Dash has accurately described as the new Blackbird as opposed to open API efforts from Microsoft. She posits two theories which are excerpted below

Who isn’t mentioned in any of these conversations? Microsoft. Is it because Microsoft hasn’t opened up its various Windows Live APIs to other developers? Nope. Microsoft announced in late April its plans for opening up and providing licensing terms for several of its key Windows Live APIs, including Windows Live Contacts, Windows Live Spaces Photo Control and Windows Live Data Protocols.

So why is Microsoft seemingly irrelevant to the conversation, when it comes to opening up its Web platform? There are a few different theories.

“I think the excitement about the Facebook platform stems from the fact that it addresses the problem of building publicity and distribution for a new application. Any developer can create an application for Facebook, and the social network will help propagate that application, exposing it to new users,” said Matt Rosoff, an analyst with Directions on Microsoft.

…

Microsoft, for its part, believes it is offering Web platform APIs the way that developers want, making them available under different business terms and permitting third parties to customize them inside their own sites, according to George Moore, General Manager of Windows Live. But Moore also acknowledges Microsoft has a different outlook in terms of which data it exposes via its APIs.

“Facebook gives you access to your social-graph (social-networking) data. We don’t do that. We have a gallery that allows users to extend Live Spaces,” Moore said.

Moore declined to comment on when or if Microsoft planned to allow developers to tap directly into user’s social-graph data like Facebook has done.

I see GeorgeM all the time, so I doubt he’ll mind if I clarify his statement above since it gives the wrong impression of our efforts given the context in which it was placed. If we go back to the definition of a social graph it’s clear that what is important is that it is a graph of user relationships not one that is tied to a particular site or service. From that perspective the Windows Live Contacts API which provides a RESTful interface to the contents of a user’s Windows Live address book complete with the list of tags/relationship types the user has applied to these contacts (e.g. “Family”, “Friends”, “Coworkers”, etc) as well as which of these contacts are the user’s buddies in Windows Live Messenger is a social graph API. 

On the other hand, this API does not give you access to the user’s Spaces friends list.  My assumption is that Mary Jo’s questions were specific to social networking sites which is why George gave that misleading answer. In addition, Yaron is fond of pointing out to me that the API is in alpha so there is still a lot that can change from now until we stamp it as v1. Until then, I’ll also decline to comment on any future plans.

As for the claim made by Matt Rosoff, I tend to agree with his assertion that the viral propagation of applications via the Facebook’s social graph is attractive to developers. However this attractiveness comes with the price of both the users and developers being locked in Facebook’s trunk.

I personally believe that the Web is the platform and this philosophy shines through in the API efforts at Microsoft. It may be that this is not as attractive to developers today as it should be but eventually the Web will win. Everyone who has fought the Web has lost. Facebook will not be an exception.

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