Profy's Tristian McIntyre recently shared his thoughts on Meebo's attempt at social IM. While Tristian's analysis is sound, I've got to disagree with his guess on Facebook's reaction to this.
Facebook has so far shown it is not an interoperability innovator. In its role as the de facto leader of the pack Facebook enjoys reinforcing its walled garden. Don't get me wrong, Facebook operates very well - it just doesn't interoperate.
Time will tell whether Facebook is rightfully relishing its market share or is acting out of short-sightedness. I would advise them to learn from their predecessors' mistakes: it took Microsoft over 10 years to move office from proprietyary to XML format. Ironically consumers paid the price twice there - once for lack of interoperability, and once again with half the world unable to open those dreaded DOCX files now.
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