As a Facebook Application Development Firm, Lonely CEO Media is able to address the real question behind Open Social (a multi-site initiative to create a unified platform)- will it siphon developers from Facebook Platform? Will it change the competitive landscape in Social Networking?

The short answer? Maybe. But there’s a lot of reasons it won’t change a thing.

First, any good developer needs to cater to the attitude and disposition of their community. Facebook has a vastly different community from Orkut, Hi5, Friendster and others. It’s primarily English speaking, and it’s higher educated. That translates directly into more advertising dollars. As importantly, different communities mean that a developer can’t develop for Orkut and assume their app will port straight to Friendster. Each community needs its own attention. Slide and RockYou have learned this in their transitions from MySpace to Facebook. The largest community will earn the most attention (and MySpace hasn’t proven that they can create a reliable platform or build valuable relationships with their users).

Secondly-  what kind of developer community will emerge? Even though Facebook’s developer community isn’t as deep as it could be, it does provide guidance. The wiki, documentation, forums, and limited Facebook employee feedback help developers better integrate with Facebook. It’s difficult to imagine the same depth emerging on a multi-site platform.

Finally, to parrot the marketing department of Facebook, is there “deep integration”? Facebook offers a number of places where developers can reach users, from the newsfeed to “wall” attachments. Will the other sites offer that? Their differences mean that a truly multi-site approach to deep integration is too difficult. There will have to be differentiation, or a sacrifice in integration. Both represent a compromise in utility.

So with all these flaws, why the “maybe”? Well, if Google is heading the initiative, there’s a chance that monetization will be better than on Facebook. And that’s all that matters. Again, the user bases of the different sites hint that monetization will still be harder than on Facebook. Standard Adsense won’t work. But if Google can leverage its vast inventory of advertisers, it may get a jump on Facebook.

Either way, a competitive landscape is good for developers. Is it good for users? “Maybe” is the best word, again. But Open Social isn’t meant to impress users- this is internecine warfare in the world of Web 2.0. Developers are just looting the grounds.