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Google Launch OpenSocial

Kieran A	13:06, 2 Nov 07 Yesterday evening at the Googleplex in California saw the launch of Google's new OpenSocial initiative for social applications. There's been a lot of talk surrounding this announcement, mainly the hope that Google were finally about to break the 'walled gardens' of the social networks. Of course, OpenSocial doesn't do this. It's simply a standardised API for social network sites to make available to developers who can then write applications on top of this. So now Scrabulous can be written once, and then run on MySpace, Bebo, Orkut (big in Brazil) and a host of other services. Apps can get access to the user's profile and friends list, and send notifications through the site's own architecture in a completely standardised way. Oh, except that will require the authors of Scrabulous to rewrite their application - because it's currently on Facebook. Zuckerberg and gang's Facebook Platform isn't part of the OpenSocial API. It doesn't play nicely, and Facebook were conspicuously absent from last night's 'Campfire'. This despite the fact that Facebook is the fastest growing of all the social networks, and the only one that's so far managed to get real traction from third party development. So the lesson from last night very much seems to be that if you're looking to write the next 'Food Fight vs Chuck Norris' killer social networking app - then thanks to Google, you'll now only need to write it twice. I guess that's some kind of progress.

13:06, 2 Nov 07

Yesterday evening at the Googleplex in California saw the launch of Google's new OpenSocial initiative for social applications. There's been a lot of talk surrounding this announcement, mainly the hope that Google were finally about to break the 'walled gardens' of the social networks.

Of course, OpenSocial doesn't do this. It's simply a standardised API for social network sites to make available to developers who can then write applications on top of this. So now Scrabulous can be written once, and then run on MySpace, Bebo, Orkut (big in Brazil) and a host of other services. Apps can get access to the user's profile and friends list, and send notifications through the site's own architecture in a completely standardised way.

Oh, except that will require the authors of Scrabulous to rewrite their application - because it's currently on Facebook. Zuckerberg and gang's Facebook Platform isn't part of the OpenSocial API. It doesn't play nicely, and Facebook were conspicuously absent from last night's 'Campfire'. This despite the fact that Facebook is the fastest growing of all the social networks, and the only one that's so far managed to get real traction from third party development.

So the lesson from last night very much seems to be that if you're looking to write the next 'Food Fight vs Chuck Norris' killer social networking app - then thanks to Google, you'll now only need to write it twice. I guess that's some kind of progress.

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