Google will today (Thursday) launch the OpenSocial API which is an application programming interface (i.e. a list of functions) that a number of social networking websites and plugin writers will comply to.
Techcrunch was the first to reveal the details but, basically, OpenSocial will cover (I quote the Techcrunch article):
- Profile Information (user data)
- Friends Information (social graph, who is linked to who)
- Activities (events, notifications, birthdays, news)
Google partners are LinkedIn, Hi5, Ning, Orkut, Salesforce, Plaxo, Friendster, Viadeo and even Oracle as well as plugin developers Flixster, iLike, RockYou and Slide.
Notably missing are Facebook and MySpace (which will therefore not be compliant with the OpenSocial API – for the time being, at least.)
My interpretation
Following Microsoft’s flirt with Facebook, Google is trying to be more present in the social networking “business” (which is massively massive!)
Google could have tried to impose their own social networking system, Orkut, but decided to do something more subtle: impose their own OpenSocial API.
The consequence will be a number of different social networking ecosystems (e.g. Friendster and LinkedIn with their extremely different fauna) working seamlessly together fighting against Facebook and MySpace.
Seems to me that Google is really trying hard to control The Long Tail of the social networking phenomenon i.e. neither the kids nor the geeks.
My feeling
I personally use a number of social networking systems and I would be happy to make them interoperate. Google has proposed an API. For once, it does not seem that they want outright control of the data being exchanged. But what will be Google’s next step?
6 November 2007 – MySpace joins OpenSocial
Now everything will be interoperable. Except Facebook.
and here is another small step for social websites,but a big leap for conquering people’s life.
We can’t kill monopoly i guess.
They want it to be THE google way and no other way.
exploiting teeny minds of people. Hopefully google after some time will be able to force everyone to use one of its own social network, since everyone needs to adhere to his api, he may have already prepared probably some social network named soogle to be the ultimate conqueror to make register in it, then gradually start analysing our deepest desires (which i suppose there must be a team of the very best psy working there) who will be able to then predict what ppl will think, then hopefully one day, google will be able to think for you before you think.. long live google!
that was sarcasm
plain html and javascript instead of some new fangled markup language you have go through the process of learning. nice for developers.
Google is evil. creating a situation where everybody wins so that no one can win and they still get to go around saying it’s their idea.