![]() Apple dissing Facebook means it stays best-of-breed on user experience but no-big-whoop on social scale. My take: While iCloud is bound to be a boon to Apple, Microsoft will fight back with SkyDrive and hold its ground. Microsoft barely has a mobile installation base and barely any network, but it does have access to hundreds of millions of desktops. Facebook may have nearly a billion users, but it is just a website/application at the mercy of the operating system. But, together, the two form one of the only plausible challenges to Apple’s next move. ![]() “Of course the Internet will still play a role, but it will take a backseat to features and connections built into the cloud-based OS X Mountain Lion.”Ī BFF deal between Microsoft and Facebook is the only thing that can keep Apple in check, he writes. They want your users’ photos on their system. They want your users’ eyes and attention in their ecosystem and not focused on your site. Oh, and they have $100 billion in cash, the largest mobile operating system and the fastest growth in personal computer share.Īten writes that Facebook’s value proposition today will be rolled into the devices of tomorrow, so Facebook will cede control of its users to Apple. If I were at either company, I’d be considering huge moves - all the way up to an acquisition or merger. I realize how crazy this might sound at Facebook, so here is a bit of perspective: The most valuable company in the U.S. ![]() Suddenly, Facebook and Microsoft find themselves on the same side of the table. This threat is what could turn Microsoft’s $240 million “like” of Facebook into more like Best Friend Forever, he opines. But OS X Mountain Lion’s social cloud features, including messaging and photo storage, create an entirely new set of competitors beyond operating systems. If you believe, as I do, that integrations within operating systems will be critically important for social services going forward, this development is more than a slight – it’s a potential catastrophe for Facebook… Rapid consumer adoption of iOS and OS X in any form clearly threatens Microsoft. Noting the history of a rocky relationship between Apple and Facebook - from pulling Facebook from Ping.fm last minute in the early days to picking Twitter over Facebook for integration with iOS 5 more recently - Aten highlights that Facebook is absent once again in the developer preview of Mountain Lion. ![]() But after digging into Mountain Lion’s features and philosophy, I think Apple’s new operating system poses a threat to another, less obvious, company - the current leader in the consumer cloud, Facebook. PC 2.0 (Cloud Edition) is the industry disruption (er, alignment) angle, with prediction that Facebook and Microsoft will go beyond “like” to Best Friend Forever because of the threat posed by Apple’s next OS.Įdward Aten, the founder of Swift.fm, writes at GigaOm:Īny move by Apple is obviously watched closely by Microsoft. And Microsoft wasted no time with its on-schedule-but-nonetheless-pressing announcement that Windows 8 was also on track for cloudification. We’ve noted before the cloud watchers’ penchant for seeing Apple’s bear-hug of the cloud with OS X Mountain Lion as the next big thing. Will Microsoft and Facebook hook up to fight back? Photo: sethoscope/Flickr
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