社交网站共同标准Open Social有负众望编辑本段回目录
游戏邦注：本文作者为Brian Balfour，他是Viximo的联合创始人，公司业务扩展和营销副总裁，Viximo主要帮助开发商将其社交游戏或应用推广至Facebook以外的平台。
继Facebook 2007年宣布开放其开发商平台后，谷歌立即推出Open Social，开创社交网站共同标准的先例。目的是使开发商能够轻松制作和推广应用，实现一次开发，随处运行。全球社交网站迅速加入“Open Social联盟”。随后出现不满声音：“整个社交网络世界”都在支持谷歌，他们开始联手对抗Facebook。
遗憾的是，Open Social有负众望。谷歌并没有积极跟进项目，提供相关支持。因此非Facebook社交网络和开发商最终未能共享统一开发平台。社交网络世界的第二大举措就这样化成炮灰。
目前虽然开发商对Facebook以外推广平台的需求日益增加，但面对Open Social他们依旧表现出迟疑。在之前所做调查中，我们访问了85名业内顶级游戏开发商，了解他们最希望开拓的社交网络。绝大部分开发商表示他们对这些Open Social平台“从不/不感兴趣”（游戏邦注：原文发表于2010年7月9日，文中涉及数据以当时为准）：
MySpace（32%），Hi5（40%），Orkut（47%），Bebo（51%）， Mixi（59%），51.com（62%），VKontakte.ru（64%），Hyves （65%）。
表示感兴趣的开发商中，只有不到10%公司表示未来9个月会优先考虑这些平台。
此外，谈到“Open Social促使多平台运作应用开发更加便捷和高效”，56%的开发商否认这个观点或者认为这个观点有待探讨。
显然开发商们认为Open Social未能实现预期目标，那么其问题何在？
Google Open Social from googleopensocialcodes.com
1）过多诠释余地和不一致性
最大的问题是Open Social并未成为共同标准。它并非统一平台或者完整API；它不过是融入系列独立指导方针，留有过多诠释空间。记住：在Open Social早期修改阶段，每个新版本的变动都很大，参照实施方案导致各个版本的部署模式各不相同，出现公认拙劣运作现象。而且每次Open Social植入都存在明显差异，随着开发商嵌入新内容，差异性便持续增加。总的来说，通过植入Open Social获得一致性并不可行，因为部署差异性致使共同标准无法实现，且持续不断的维护需求使方便应用整合的目标荡然无存。
2）关键功能支持的模糊性
Open Social无法为通知渠道界面提供有力支持，且各网站的约束条款相差很大。同样需要注意的是Open Social并不支持虚拟货币界面。Open Social早在社交游戏和虚拟交易成为社交应用生态系统组成部分的时候就出现了，但如今虚拟商品是社交网络收益的主要来源，Open Social并未给予虚拟商品获得成功的两大关键先决因素相关支持：病毒式渠道和虚拟货币。
病毒式渠道因发行商而异，API也因开发商而异。病毒式渠道对应用和游戏的用户增长和粘性至关重要，没有它们，社交应用或游戏就无法运作。至于虚拟货币，很多发行商都已经习惯这样的模式：Facebook拥有Facebook Credits，Hi5拥有Hi5 Coins（游戏邦注：很多网站都开发统一付费系统和货币，供用户在网站所有游戏和应用中进行消费）。Open Social没有支持虚拟货币的标准模式，于是很多发行商就得自己创建系统，这些系统的功能和复杂性各不相同。这使得意图投放该平台的开发商需完成不同植入过程，开发商因此需要消耗更多时间和资源。Open Social旨在促使应用发布和推广更便捷，但其完全忽略这些关键要素。
3）技术只是极小组成部分
为何Facebook开发平台对该网站来说如此重要？其成功与强大技术支持关系不大，而是更多关乎庞大开发商生态系统（游戏邦注：他们透过这个平台创造、推广富有吸引力的内容）。换而言之，没有开发商生态系统，平台技术也就一文不值。
Open Social只关注社交网络创建平台所需的技术要素，忽略促进创建真正开发商生态系统。社交网络不得不独自承担招募、整合、管理和优化开发商的任务。就如我们所见，目前存在众多开发商荒芜的平台（游戏邦注：如Bebo、Orkut和Hyves），尽管这些网站依旧拥有数百万用户。虽然社交网络本身需要承担多数责任，但Open Social营造的“开发解决一切”心理也难逃其责。
那么，未来出路何在呢？
目前很多公司，包括Viximo推广平台，如今开始开发协助游戏开发商和社交网络应对这些挑战的产品。答案很明确：如果行业照此速度持续发展，Facebook不会是开发商推广产品的唯一和最终平台。随着行业的持续发展，制胜关键将会是开发Facebook之外具有扩展性的强大游戏推广模式。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译）
How Open Social Is Failing The Social Game Industry
This is a guest blog post Brian Balfour, Co-Founder and VP BD and Marketing, of Viximo who helps social applications and games get distribution on social networks beyond Facebook.
Immediately after Facebook announced its open developer platform in 2007, Google quickly launched Open Social, its initiative to create a common standard for social sites across the web. Its purpose was to enable developers to create and distribute applications easily – write once, deploy everywhere. Social networks around the world quickly joined the “OS Alliance” and a PR frenzy followed, suggesting that the “entire social networking world” was backing Google as they were ganging up to take on Facebook.
Unfortunately, Open Social did not live up to the hype. The project lacked follow-through and support from Google (more on this below), and consequently failed to connect non-Facebook social networks and developers with a common development platform. The great second coming of the social networking world remained a pipe dream.
Today, despite the growing need for more distribution options beyond Facebook, developers continue to express hesitation and uncertainty with Open Social. In our recent survey, we asked 85 of the industry’s top game developers which social networks they were interested in expanding to in the near future. A significant percentage of developers responded “Never/Not Interested” to these Open Social platforms:
MySpace – 32%, Hi5 – 40%, Orkut – 47%, Bebo – 51%, Mixi – 59%, 51.com – 62%, VKontakte.ru – 64%, Hyves – 65%.
Out of those who said they were interested, in all cases less than 10% said it was a priority within the next 9 months.
Additionally, when given the statement “Open Social is succeeding at making it easier and more efficient to develop applications to run across multiple social networks”, a majority of 56% said they Disagreed with or were Undecided about this statement.
It’s clear that developers think that Open Social is not succeeding in its intended purpose, but what exactly is causing the issues?
1) Too Much Room for Interpretation and Inconsistency
The biggest problem is that Open Social fails to be a standard. It is not a unified platform or complete API; it is merely a series of decoupled guidelines that leave too much room for interpretation. Remember: Open Social changed fairly significantly with each new version in the early revisions, and reference implementations resulted in deployment models that were completely different version over version, and notoriously poor performing. Every Open Social integration is different, and continues to be different as developers incorporate new updates that still vary radically from previous versions. In short, the effort taken to align with Open Social in the interest of consistency is not justified, since the varying implementations defeat the purpose of a common standard and the ongoing maintenance quashes the goal of easing app integration.
2) Ambiguous Support For Critical Features
Open Social fails to provide robust support for a notification channel interface and bindings on various sites differ greatly. Equally noticeable is its lack of support for a virtual currency interface. Open Social was conceived before social gaming and virtual transactions became an integral part of the social app ecosystem, but now that virtual goods are generating the majority of revenue on social networks, Open Social still fails to provide support for two critical prerequisites for virtual goods success: viral channels and virtual currency.
Viral channels are drastically different from publisher to publisher, and as a result so are the API’s for developers. They are critical for the growth and engagement of users into these applications and games and without them, any social app or game will be largely ineffective. And with regards to virtual currency, many publishers are taking the path that Facebook has with Facebook Credits, or that Hi5 has with Hi5 Coins – developing a native, site wide payments system and currency that users can spend on any game or application on that site. Without a standard way to support this, many publishers have started home brewing their own systems, ranging in functionality and complexity. This once again requires different and unique integrations for developers looking to distribute on the site, and creates more time and resource consuming work for app and game developers. As a platform geared towards making app deployment and distribution simpler, Open Social fails in its effort by ignoring these critical features.
3) Technology Is A Small Part Of The Equation
Why is the Facebook development platform so valuable for Facebook? Its success has less to do with robust technology and more to do with the massive ecosystem of developers who are utilizing the platform to create and distribute engaging content. All said and done, platform technology is worth nothing without the developer ecosystem.
Open Social only addresses the technology piece for social networks trying to build a platform, but contributes nothing to building an actual eco-system of developers. Recruiting, integrating, managing, and optimizing developers is left for each social network to do on their own. As we have seen, there are numerous platforms (Bebo, Orkut, Hyves, etc) that are developer ghost towns today, despite still having millions of users on the site. While a lot of that blame should fall on the shoulders of the social networks themselves, Open Social has contributed to the issue by legitimizing an “if you build it, they will come” mentality.
So, What’s Next?
Multiple companies, including Viximo’s distribution platform, are creating products to help solve these challenges for both game developers and social networks. The writing on the wall is clear: Facebook cannot be the be-all and end-all distribution option for social games if the industry is to keep its current growth rate. As the industry continues to evolve, its success will rest significantly on the development of a robust and scalable game distribution model beyond Facebook. （Source：socialtimes）
