Open Web APIs, Google’s Open Social and you

Big buzz abounds as Google launches it’s new Open Web API called Open Social. Marc Andreessen has a nice write up on the subject: Open Social: a new universe of social applications all over the web. Here’s a snip:

My company, Ning, is participating in this week’s launch of a new open web API called Open Social, which is being spearheaded by Google and joined by a wide range of partners including Google’s own Orkut, LinkedIn, Hi5, Friendster, Salesforce.com, Oracle, iLike, Flixster, RockYou, and Slide.

In a nutshell, Open Social is an open web API that can be supported by two kinds of developers:

• “Containers” — social networking systems like Ning, Orkut, LinkedIn, Hi5, and Friendster, and…
• “Apps” — applications that want to be embedded within containers — for example, the kinds of applications built by iLike, Flixster, Rockyou, and Slide.

Read more here: http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/10/open-social-a-n.html

And here’s a clip from a related post by Michelle Murrain over at ZenOfNPTech:

OpenSocial is a set of APIs. It’s aimed primarily at developers. Google has a number of partners, including social network sites like LinkedIn, Friendster and Ning, as well as Salesforce, which does have very interesting implications given the increasing use of Salesforce in the nonprofit sector.

OpenSocial is a set of APIs that handle three different kinds of user data: profiles, social graph (who your friends are) and activities (the stuff of the Facebook news feeds.)  And the language of these APIs are standard HTML and Javascript. Any application written for OpenSocial will work on any partner social network – any OpenSocial “container”. That means developers need only write an app once, and it can get used on any of the networks involved, like Orkut and LinkedIn. Basically, if the more social network sites that adopt OpenSocial, the more open the whole thing gets.

Read more here: http://www.zenofnptech.org/2007/11/what-opensocial-means.html

Some related reading:

• OpenSocial doesn’t knock down walls
• Google’s Open Social API – Googlified
• Google OpenSocial will (hopefully) make social apps more relevant
• OpenSocial, Google’s Open Answer to Facebook « GigaOM
• Google OpenSocial – Let’s Discuss
• Open Social: a new universe of social applications all over the web
• The long awaited “Facebook killer” from Google is here
• What’s “Open Social” All About
• Why OpenSocial Is so Exciting