The past couple of weeks have been action packed. Netvibes announced that it is going to take it’s platform and make it open source in an effort to compete effectively with the big guys. iGoogle decided to take on facebook by integrating “open social” into it’s start page. And now we have Yahoo announcing it’s own social platform.

But is an open social strategy really going to help keep folks away from Facebook? I’m not so sure that it is. Why you ask? The reason is tied up in the brand. Now, I know, it has been a long time since I talked about brand strategy, but as the web becomes “whatever you want” on Google, Yahoo, MSN, Netvibes, etc. The value of the brand becomes even more important. Ask yourself this question. What does Google’s brand stand for?

That one is simple, search.

Now ask yourself what does Yahoo’s brand stand for?

In my mind this one is a little muddy because I think of a portal which means “anything”. And this is part of the reason why Google was able to place it’s stamp on search and claim it as a verb.

Now think about Facebook. People ask “do you have a Facebook?” And for those of us that do, having a facebook means something. It means, yes I have a social profile online where you can get some information about me, check up on random things I’ve posted, and contact me. It is like having a little online interactive yearbook where you can communicate with your friends.

Why is this important? Well in terms of brand perception that doesn’t happen with either Google or Yahoo. People don’t say “do you have a Google?” and they don’t say “Do you have a Yahoo?”

They do say “Google it”, and Yahoo has tried to get people asking “Do you Yahoo?” although no one can tell me exactly what that means.

My point is this. Google, Netvibes, Yahoo, etc can build social into everything, but until they have the brand perception it isn’t going to do much to stop the Facebook’s and MySpace’s of the world. I imagine the best approach would be to purchase Facebook or MySpace and build your services into one of them rather than dilute the value of your own brand. By Google going social platform with profiles it becomes less about search and this creates a bit of opportunity. What happens when Google becomes a diluted portal like Yahoo? Well, in my mind there comes an opportunity for a new type of search engine. Maybe something even more powerful than Google’s search that has some 2.0 features. Something that is focused on search, but learns from the web community. Not necessarily social with profiles etc but Maybe it could learn slang, or allow people to flag inappropriate sites, tag them, rank them and re-categorize them. Or hell, maybe they could flag advertising that is not appropriate or has nothing to do with the search and give companies honest community ratings along side the search. I guess this is similar to Digg, but rather than just be about headlines, it should be about the entire web.

Anyway.. To answer the question– Will an open social strategy get more people to visit? It will get some initial buzz and in the short term should get people to at least check out the new features, but as a long term strategy, as a reason to abandon the MySpace’s and Facebooks it faces some serious challenges.