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Social networking has experienced several important milestones this year. In fact, most would agree that the entire landscape of social networking has been totally transformed. It really started back in late spring with the launch of the Facebook platform. Without going into unnecessary detail, this platform allowed developers to create web applications atop the Facebook site. One key detail that led to the success of this platform was the availability of user information to the application, such as Interests and Profile information. By utilizing this data, application developers could make their applications more relevant and much more viral (as proven by zombies, ninjas and werewolves who are constantly biting).

For 3 months after this platform launched, the word "widget" disappeared from the local Silicon Valley vernacular and instead everyone and their brother was writing a Facebook application. Why? What was the Facebook Gold Rush about? User generation? Experimentation? Monetization?

There's a cool theory in the startup world which leads to many a cool company getting funded - gather the critical mass and the money will come. Most involved in the Facebook Gold Rush believed that if an application could gain some traction it would lead to monetization. It all started with iLike, a music service that had a sticky application. It became a success overnight and was the Cinderella of Facebook Applications, gaining millions of users in a few days and inspiring the bedtime stories of many entrepreneurs.

iLike also had a nice business model - selling music tickets. But most Facebook Applications are going to depend on the bedrock model of startups: Advertising. In fact, some Facebook Application developers quickly built or purchased popular Facebook Apps in order to create such critical mass that they could create an Advertising Network. While I won't debate the longevity of these applications (I haven't been in a Facebook food fight lately, have you?), I do believe that critical mass + advertising = revenue.

So does Facebook and Google. Today is another important milestone in the Social Networking revolution. Google launches OpenSocial(apparently this site will go live on Thursday). Techcrunch does a great writeup and overview. For developers, this might be the start of a new type of Gold Rush. Obviously, the opening up Social Networks has become a trend. MySpace announced something similar a couple of weeks ago.

This is great news for users of web applications and for Splashtop. The more that social networks open up, the more developers will be inspired to create relevant web applications that take into consideration important things like who are our friends and what are our interests. Competition between Google, Facebook and MySpace can only lead to better products for us, the consumer.