Given that Myspace, Yahoo, and many others seem to be fading stars, I’d suggest they look at the history of the Internet during the 90s.

Remember Microsoft did not originally include TCP/IP protocols in Windows.

You could easily hook two or more Windows machines up on a local network, but to use the Internet, you had to install optional drivers.

Microsoft’s world-view was that to get onto a worldwide network you would eventually have to sign onto their servers in some way and they tried and failed to build a system that would accomplish this (even large networks within companies are still problematic in this regard).

The rest of the world continued to revolve around open protocols that were not dependent on Windows or Microsoft and it’s now hard to imagine a replacement for the current Internet that would involve a tie-in with a single company.

Fast forward and you find Facebook trying mightily to control all social interactions with a very much closed system (APIs you can use, are a far cry from APIs you can participate in the design and coding of).

If something is going to replace e-mail (if that’s even possible) as a way for people to communicate with each other online, then it has to have that same property of e-mail that allows anyone with an e-mail address to send a message to any other e-mail address they have collected. It’s no coincidence that many of these online services have gone to using e-mail addresses in place of “user ids” as an e-mail address is the only uniquely identifying string that most of us have on the Internet. Even our real names don’t uniquely identify us in many cases, and there is no such thing as a world-wide social security number (yet. Not that we’d want to use it if there was).

Facebook has collected a lot of information about us (in many cases without our realizing it) and I’m sure they will continue. They might or might not fully open their protocols to others in the future (I’m doubtful). In the mean time, success will come to those who realize that it is not the protocols themselves but the collected database that is valuable. In that regard, Google, Myspace, Yahoo, and many others should start to work together, in ways that don’t involve buying each other, to build the real social network of the future. Open Social is a step in the right direction, although it probably needs to evolve into something not to tightly associated with Google. Facebook and Microsoft, companies of the same DNA will be among the last to join into such open efforts, but they will certainly come along once they see the tide turning against them.