Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?
The news came across the tubes last week that Steve Jobs had a very interesting dinner guest a few weeks earlier. Mark Zuckerberg, the much maligned genius of Facebook, had visited the Apple CEO at home for a little food and conversation. One can imagine a Godfather-style meeting of the minds, the older Don relaying a life’s knowledge to a beloved underling or perhaps the older soldier discussing tactics and strategy with the promising recruit. But both of those scenarios would paint a picture of tutelage and respect I think Mr. Jobs only reserves for those in his immediate circle. Mr. Zuckerberg came to dinner to discuss much more pressing matters.
At the time of the initial report, news outlets conjectured the meeting was to solve the Ping impasse. When Apple initially launched Ping, they did so demoing its connectivity to Facebook but when iTunes 10 actually shipped it was no where to be found. The story is that when Apple and Facebook couldn’t agree to usage terms, Apple shipped it with Facebook connectivity anyway and Facebook pulled the plug on them. Now I’m sure they probably talked about that during the soup course but in the lenses of yesterday’s Mac-centric press conference in Cupertino they had larger things to discuss.
It is becoming more and more apparent that the largest and most successful technology businesses in the world today, Apple and Facebook, are headed towards some sort of strategic alliance. It could be a vast integration of their services or the rumored Apple purchase that has M&A people everywhere salivating but something is happening here and it’s happening whether Mark Zuckerberg wants it or not. Every iLife 11 demo yesterday featured some sort of Facebook connectivity. There may be other social connections in the final product but it was Facebook getting pushed. I’m sure the new Mac App Store will also feature it when Lion comes out. If the real world had a Like button, Apple wouldn’t be pushing Facebook’s, they would be mashing it.
And if Apple and Facebook formed some sort of partnership, be it as equals or in a takeover, consider the implications. It would form a bloc in Silicon Valley that not only included these two, but by relation, Microsoft through their Bing partnership and Yahoo through their more or less proxy ownership by Microsoft. Who might this all be directed against? Google of course. Google that’s trying to muscle in on Apple’s turf with Android and Google who’s trying to muscle in on Facebook’s turf with the rumored Google.me service. All of a sudden Google finds itself with very few friends any more. What an ugly position to be in.
So while I’m sure Mr, Zuckerberg enjoyed the Jobs’ family hospitality, he may also have entered into the type of partnership that shapes and molds the coming years in technology. An Apple feeding off the social energy of Facebook instantly outmaneuvers a Google still fumbling around in a dimly lit room trying to figure out its social strategy. More importantly though, it opens Apple up to the common person through Facebook. Apple is famously seen as a premium brand used by creatives and Windows-haters. If they could tap into Facebook’s customer base, there’s no where to go but up.
Sometimes dinner is just dinner and sometimes it is the start of something new and different. It will be interesting to see in the coming months if this dinner shaped the future of the world we live in.
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