WHAT INNOVATION MEANS TO SOCIAL NETWORKS

WHAT INNOVATION MEANS TO SOCIAL NETWORKS 

 

by Allen Hurff Leaders Speak

The model up until now, before people opened the networks [through Open Social, a universal programming language applicable to MySpace, Google, Bebo and others], companies had to spend a lot of time building products and were bound by their own innovation. But a company can only build so many products a year. It can only innovate so much.

When you bring in the developer community through Open Social, all of a sudden you bring in 5000, 10,000 or 300,000 developers working to build these applications. They are not bound by the company's direction and main focus, so innovation just starts to happen. If you don't open it up, your innovation is only limited to your own staff basically. We have to go to the community and let it innovate. Instead of having to go outside and find innovation, it comes to you. I am amazed at some of the things that are coming out through Open Social networking. But now we are reviewing intellectual property issues. I want to mature that discussion.

When it comes to innovation, there are a lot of people who just want to do it. I think that's great. But we take a step back and we whiteboard all the scenarios before proceeding, because we have a reputation out there and we want to protect it.

I don't believe there is any risk in opening up to innovation; obviously, you have to think of security, but if you provide that and extend it to the developer community, I don't know if there's a risk.

- Allen Hurff, Senior Vice President, Myspace Engineering

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