So that was definitely the surprise of all surprises at this WWDC keynote. Steve Jobs introduced a version of Safari which will run on Windows (XP and Vista, to be precise).

Now, after all the time I’ve spent with WebKit in the last few months (the Apple browser engine project I wrote about before, which “hijacks” Safari), some things make sense: 1) why sites like Google Reader suddenly started working completely well, in the last month; and 2) why WebKit suddenly took a turn towards unstable in the last two weeks (I’d imagine Apple forked their version a little while ago the engine so that they could get it cleaned up for this beta release, leaving the WebKit developers back to being able to do the dirty work).

It’s mind-boggling to an Old School Mac-head like myself to see this. Ten years ago, we worried about losing IE for Mac. Now, we look at Safari for Windows. What a weird wild trip it’s been…

Let’s start out by talking about the original web social space: Friendster. In the Summer of 2003, it was the site to be at, and arguably its success heralded the coming “Web2.0 Revolution”.

See, Friendster, for you young ‘uns, was the Grandmother of the social media space. She was the original friend network site, but unfortunately, she was also very cranky about how people used her “resources”. The NYTimes had a great article on what went wrong; but as a synopsis, it was a matter of forgetting whom made the site important in the first place: the users. Instead of letting them “get on with it”, the creative things people tried to use Friendster for were squelched; add to it the sites well-known stability issues and Friendster lost mindshare and its lead started to erode to nothing.

The site which took over the reigns was MySpace, a site which had no problem letting people “get on with it”. It has had great success based on this; but obviously, the many ways in which their corporate parent has tried to monetize its success means they now have their own troubles in this department. Advertising revenue has become the main sore-point, it seems; and the result has been endless wrangles with their “partners”.

Now Facebook has been quietly building up a second-place position by being initially focused solely on college, and then high school, students. Being captain of that space has now given it the quiet luxury of fomenting a broader strategy. One which is quite clearly intelligent, based on the failure of Friendster, and the current (self-imposed) travails of MySpace: Facebook Platform.

When I first heard about this, I was not impressed because I heard about it from the developer side. Talking about an “open API” is great but doesn’t say much about what can be done. Well, I quickly got to eat my words. This looks to be a Whopper.

Already people have developed apps to allow integration of Twitter; your Netflix queue; random RSS feeds; your Amazon wishlist (a little buggy at the moment)… and I will venture to guess that these will keep on coming. And coming, and coming.

What makes it so nice, though? What makes me stand up and take notice, when surely it’s not that much different than all the customizations available for a MySpace page? In alliterative language: click, configure, consume. Facebook follows the best of Web2.0 interface standards to avoid the messy coding and kludges that MySpace requires for its customization. It’s seamless and simple, and I am sorely impressed.

In conclusion: Friendster failed cos it failed to be open. MySpace succeeded cos they didn’t do anything about people’s ad hoc customizations. But MySpace is caught in a technological cul-de-sac: cos they never guided any of the customization craze, any attempts to move its people over will risk destabilizing its lead. So what else then?

Now, Facebook just needs critical mass, cos they have what looks to be the most elegant solution to the desires of “UserSpace” to do what they will with their profiles. They have plenty of younger users, but will definitely be in need of coaxing in the older ones (and non-academic ones, for that matter).

If I could be Facebook’s evangelist right now, I know I’d be shouting it from the hilltops: Facebook makes it simple. They’ve done a great job at broadening their appeal without either a) wrecking their technological base or b) forcing their users to become programmers just to make things work. Brilliant.

In the grand tradition of deep-blog-linking, I’m going to point to a post on the Reforming Project Management blog, which discusses in brief the policy of Four Seasons Hotels for hiring personnel… and some of their “keys” to a successful operation.

It struck me mainly because a lot of the focus was on how they choose to try and get names right. And, simply use them. Repeatedly, to address guests… and staff.

Call me a bit prejudiced on account of my own strangely spelled given name (no not “Kreeg”), but it does point out how little niceties go an extraordinarily long way to assisting one’s enterprise in making people feel welcome.

Furthemore, it shows how important social graces really are. As they say, it’s the little things that count… mainly cos they’re not really so little.

In the last post I lauded CBS for their cunningly clever purchase of last.fm. I think it’s an extremely wise move, and speaks volumes about the intelligence behind their Internet strategy.

Now, in the other corner, The Register UK reports on eBay’s purchase of StumbleUpon: “eBay makes another baffling buy”. Joining the Skype acquisition in one of those WTF moments, eBay makes another purchase which suggests they have some cock-eyed belief they can become the next Yahoo!

Earth to eBay: it’s not 2000. You’re not making waves by emulating AOL or Yahoo! in having a pastiche of non-core platforms pasted together. The move smacks of desperation… no, wait—not desperation. Just a mediocre attempt to “diversify revenue streams by leveraging co-branding etc.” On the other hand, it might make sense. But how, I and The Register have yet to uncover. Anyone else out there who can shed some light on this?

TechCrunch reports that last.fm has just been bought by CBS for $280 million.

The article’s comments include the usual warnings about frothiness. However, I’d say the price is cheap and rather justified considering the time, efforts, and most importantly, the breadth of what last.fm offers… it’s rather unique out there as a music-taste social network.

Personally? I’m impressed by the move. It’s an important and wise move by the CBS folks to “get in on the game”… kudos to the team that devised this strategy. I think it will be a move of lasting value.