The Economist has an article in the March 19th issue that discusses how open standards will, as they put it, ‘trump “walled gardens” on the internet’. The article is referring to closed systems on the internet such as Facebook and Second Life, which, much like the earliest subscription-based online services such as AOL, CompuServe, and Prodigy, have closed virtual borders and are thus in the unenviable position of having to deal with the rest of the Internet proper.
Back in 1994 when these types of services were offering e-mail, chatrooms, discussion boards, and so forth it was the easiest way for people to get online. But people quickly realized they could venture outside of these closed systems (AOL, CompuServe) to access the wider Internet and everything glorious about it. These services failed to adapt to the wider condition of the open Internet and died unglorious deaths (with the curious exception of AOL which continued on to become an open web portal of some sort).
Virtual worlds like Second Life and social networking sites like Facebook and Myspace are facing similar threats. They have been useful as pioneers in their fields certainly, but as standards emerge that allow people to create their own communities and virtual worlds and to share data easily across these customized communities and virtual worlds the need for a closed system such as Second Life or Facebook will become less interesting.
The article provides some interesting links to sites I didn’t even know about that are offering such open services. One is called Multiverse which allows you to create your own virtual worlds (why have an island in Second Life when you can have your own universe the article asks). The other is Ning which allows people to setup their own social networks as well. This is just the beginning but I suspect Second Life and Facebook will have to deal with these emerging standards or die unglorious deaths like their predecessors CompuServe and Prodigy.