All Things Digital

Marc Canter isn’t the only one talking out loud about Google’s OpenSocial initiative.

Max Levchin, founder, chairman and CEO of Slide–the No. 1 widget maker on Facebook–sent out an email (posted in full after the jump) on Friday about the development. His point? For makers of third-party applications for social networks, their bread is buttered on all sides and along the edges.

Max, to continue the carb metaphor, is one smart cookie. (See my series of three interviews with him, also after the jump, to get an idea of his plans for world widget domination.)

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On the day that Google announced its roping of MySpace and Bebo into its not-Facebook coalition of companies that were united behind its OpenSocial play to make social-networking programming open and ubiquitous, I had a long-planned lunch date with colorful Web entrepreneur Marc Canter.

How perfect! Canter has been a nettlesome presence of late on the Web 2.0 scene, with his longtime effort to pester all these social-networking platforms to interoperate and open their social graphs. His mantra: “Bringing social to software.”

And OpenSocial obviously soothed the savage beast, as you will see in the video interview I did with him below.

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In case you missed them, check out these stories from last week:

Kara Visits VC Peter Thiel: A video interview with the first investor in Facebook (pictured here), who also sold PayPal to eBay for $1.5 billion.

Thiel’s take: Web 2.0 is underhyped!

Writers’ Strike!: The battle is on in Hollywood, as writers and studios fight over DVD fees split, but there is also wrangling over potential profits from new media efforts.

While that income is still pretty small, it’s a canard that producers are trying to insist that they can’t fork over better percentages because the market needs room to grow. Writers deserve their fair share as the online business gets bigger over the next decade.

Maka-Maka Melee?: Google took a solid shot at Facebook with its new OpenSocial offering, which lets anyone become a Facebook! The signing of MySpace at the end of the week was another slap, of course.

But this week Facebook fires back with its SocialAds offering to compete in the online ad game, where Google rules.

Hulu Doesn’t Stink: I and many others were surprised how good an experience the new online video joint venture from NBC Universal and News Corp. is so far.

While it is certainly not perfect (no downloading, limits on hit shows), it is a clean, easy-to-use service that gives users a lot of ability to control content and a quantum leap in attitude from Hollywood pooh-bahs.

Maybe they could become that enlightened when it comes to ending the writers’ strike.

So there is a lot of swirl out there about a spate of companies and their supposed plans.

In the interest of time-saving, we will group them all here in one easy list that you can clip and save.

DEALS AFOOT?:

Yes, there is always a lot of sniffing around out there, especially given that a lot of Web 2.0 companies are more likely to be acquired than go public.

Do look for smaller ad networks to be bought up in the wake of a spate of bigger sales of late–DoubleClick to Google, aQuantive to Microsoft, Right Media and BlueLithium to Yahoo).

Now, it looks like AOL might get into the game again, after presciently grabbing Advertising.com way back in 2004 for $435 million. The new target, in a deal that a source close to the company said is “80% there,” is Quigo–the content-targeting ad network. The price? About $300 million.

Less likely for action are some other names being bandied about.

WordPress (the blogging software and hosting company AllThingsD.com uses), for example, has some suitors and is contemplating a sale after some offers. But don’t bet on it.

And RockYou is not being bought by, say, Yahoo–at least not this week. While rumors of wild valuations for the No. 2 maker of widgets on Facebook (Slide usually outranks it) have been bandied about, it has not had any significant talks with anyone.

GOOGLE GETS FRIENDLY (EXCEPT TO FACEBOOK):

As we wrote in a post yesterday, contrary to rumors, the Google project (codenamed Maka-Maka, doubtlessly by that wacky pair, Graham Spencer and Joe Kraus, pictured here, formerly of JotSpot and Excite, who worked on it) was imminent. As in now. Right now. This instant.

Officially named OpenSocial, it is a way to create a social graph over the Web that is open to third-party apps friendly and, as I wrote, is indeed both a “real attempted assault on the Facebook platform or more of a way to widely spread the gospel of social networking (and, thus, an assault on the Facebook platform).”

While Google has signed a bunch of prominent partners, it has yet to grab the No. 2 social-networking site Facebook (unlikely) and the No. 1 MySpace (much more likely, but don’t hold your breath). But it’s definitely a put-up-or-shut-up dare by the search giant, especially given Facebook’s professed love of openness.

Who knows if it will catch on, given that it is clear it is all in the hands of the apps developer community. If not, it will surely be a big black eye for Google, if it can’t motivate widely beyond search.

FACEBOOK IS A BIG BOY NOW:

It looks like former Yahoo Mike Murphy–who heads ad sales at Facebook (and is pictured here)–is finally getting his ducks in order with a new ad offering to be called SocialAds next week at its big confab in NYC.

Unlike the competition’s contextual ad programs, this will be squarely aimed at people’s self-expressed interests and demographics.

And, of course, Microsoft will be Facebook’s partner in serving the ads, for now at least. Good lord, it has bought and paid for this date many times over, so a fine time must be had by all!

I can’t tell you how thrilled we are that Facebook (and that nice boy Mark Zuckerberg) is finally putting some meat on its skinny little business model to take advantage of its fast-growing popularity.

But let’s keep in mind that it remains to be seen how lucrative this kind of ad network is and how scalable it is across the Web (and not just on Facebook).

It will also be interesting to see if the offering is truly innovative and different than existing solutions–or if it just serves up some dumb and useless ad for blood supplies, because you happen to be playing Vampire a little too much.

(We’re teasing, Mark, but not very much at all.)

OH, YES, THAT GPHONE:

More open verbiage from Google, which will roll out a mobile-phone operating system of software and services for a new kind of open cellphone sometime in this millennium (are you as sick of the speculation about the Gphone as I am?).

Since we’re talked out, here’s a much better Wall Street Journal Online video on the subject:

BOVINE UPDATE

Yahoo’s holy cows? Still sacred and going strong!

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.