And myspace might be saying “Thanks for the add” to google as well.
I had initially thought this story from Tech Crunch was like a formation of a “coalition of the willing” with the other social networks, but I’m begining to think it might have much bigger implications.
Essentially Google has defined a set of api’s for core features for “social applications”
* Profile Information (user data)
* Friends Information (social graph)
* Activities (things that happen, News Feed type stuff)
Hosts agree to accept the API calls and return appropriate data. Google won’t try to provide universal API coverage for special use cases, instead focusing on the most common uses. Specialized functions/data can be accessed from the hosts directly via their own APIs.
Could this form the foundation for the Internet to finally become the platform? Sure you’ve got a few social networks involved but what if enterprises started using this as the basis for their own social networks? Imagine companies that started to run their businesses on social applications. Sure email is the lingua franca still, but wikis, blogs, and the concept of social networking are changing the way businesses are working.
The only thing that I see missing that would really enable this to happen is some kind of real identity system, because still the advantage that Facebook has at this time is pretty good identity and relationship management. Again the old adage applies, “on the internet nobody knows your a dog”
UPDATE:
It seems that quite a few people think it’s likely that Facebook will likely join OpenSocial as well, it makes sense, but it’s clear that Google had to get everyone else on board first.
Ars Technica has some more on the story as does Read/Write Web who I totally recommend following for more insight on this.
Typical Google release as of late. Half-assed.
The only thing they released was the client side API documentation. The more interesting server side stuff that would allow you to implement this API on your own site is still completely missing. There isn’t even any documentation up about it.
I am not sure if Facebook will join OpenSocial given that Microsoft is now one its owners albeit a very small stake. OpenSocial is quite a damper I think since that time when FB launched F8 Keynote.
It just makes a lot more sense to view all social networks equal in terms of opportunities presented. OpenSocial I believe will encourage corporations to take online selling one notch up into social networks now that the barriers of a potential monopolistic social network falls through.
50 million users don’t care that applications can now be ported across other platforms that do not have the same social graph as facebook
Enable a “one-identify” system where i can use my facebook account to login to all the others and still have access to my social graph….now that would be powerful.
Funny - when I first read this post, I thought you’d written “Thanks for the Ad” … which is what I was originally thinking the big win might be (sharing the attention, and the [financial] wealth) … but then I read Scoble’s reasons for sticking with Facebook, which include “6. In the next two months Facebook will announce SocialAds and revenue sharing for those ads. From what I’m hearing what they are announcing is pretty exciting too. If Facebook is PAYING ME to stay on Facebook do you think I’m going to move to Google?” so maybe OpenSocial and Facebook users will all be able to say “thanks for the Ad”.
@Joe yeah, I had originally titled this “thanks for the add” but I went back and forth on the content, I’m still have mixed feelings on this and the post went from being negative to neutral to possibly positive pretty quickly.
@Phil no kidding, it’s the identity system that is needed. to be quite honest my social graph is probably better represented by a combination of my gmail address book and facebook friends list and my yelp friends than any single one. Until we get friend “portability” all social networks are at risk of great big sucking sounds as everyone leaves to check out the next big thing
@mad finn LOL thanks for the technical review, much appreciated