Are social networking platforms the genesis for a web operating system?

Facebook have started the trend. Build a successful social network, and allow third party developers to leverage the API and build web-based applications that the community can choose. Consider it an eco-system for developers to build and win a fan base, and at the same time allow Facebook to develop an integrated platform, with underlying rules that Facebook own and dictate. Feels like Microsoft all over again, doesn’t it? But as a developer, why care about Facebook? Well isn’t it compelling to think your simple but ‘creative’ AJAX app could be selected by a couple of million people?

Didn’t AOL try this? Yes they did, and perhaps for those who remember this effort it might be the old adage of being ahead of your time. The web is very different in many ways than it was in the late 90’s. Including the obvious weighting that 40 million registered users has inside a site like Facebook.

Google are also busy, and announced that they will release a suite of API’s on November 5. Information at hand is that Google plan to start with Orkut and iGoogle, then expand to include other Google services over time. Many might agree that Google’s effort will not be done by halves, but perhaps be an enterprise wide sweeping change on the backend of the phenomenal and somewhat awe-inspiring success of Facebook.

So what is the killer strategy here? The Microsoft ‘we own the platform’ approach for Facebook, or perhaps the anticipated Google ‘we don’t care about your application, the fact that your pulling and pushing data across our servers, we can stick in advertising anywhere we like’ approach. Both do have sizeable merit. If we look at this from an historical perspective, then 23 year old Mark Zuckerberg and his Facebook business valued at somewhere between US$10B – US$15B is perhaps the front runner.

But, there is just one more thing. We can’t forget Rupert Murdoch’s MySpace who have just announced that they are gearing up to launch the MySpace platform. Again, same strategy, open the framework with a set of API’s and allow third party developers to develop stuff for the community to consume.

Are we witnessing the early days of a web based operating system, quietly coalescing its existence out of the most influential web destinations in the short history of the Internet? If so, what would a web based operating system look like? What would be the economics for its existence? Could it be shared? Perhaps the technology debate is over, who cares. If your business application (whether it’s a social oriented product, or a traditional Enterprise product) if it’s not web based, you’re dead.