Saturday, November 3, 2007

Google's Open Social



I've been delaying this post for three days now.

Google (The villain and the hero) has released this kinda, sorta "new" social network.

It isn't really a new social network and we don't know if this what Maka-Maka is about.

Google's open social encompasses a lot of social networks like that incomprehensible popular hi5, their own Orkut, LinkedIn, Ning, Plaxo, Friendster, Viadeo, Ilike and Oracle

"Social networks have reached a point of maturity, and opening APIs will help them grow," said Adam Trachtenberg, a senior manager at eBay.
What Google is saying about this:

The web is more interesting when you can build apps that easily interact with your friends and colleagues. But with the trend towards more social applications also comes a growing list of site-specific APIs that developers must learn.

OpenSocial provides a common set of APIs for social applications across multiple websites. With standard JavaScript and HTML, developers can create apps that access a social network's friends and update feeds.

All of this means that developing applications, gadgets or services for different site that work with this API is getting easier and it will work immediately with any social network that plays nice with this API.

This networks of social networks will allow yo to use the same login for all of them and they will share info and core data

  • Profile Information (user data)
  • Friends Information (social graph)
  • Activities (things that happen, News Feed type stuff)
From Google's FAQ

How do I create social apps using OpenSocial?
Social apps are initially created in the same manner as Google Gadgets: with your favorite text editor or within the Google Gadget Editor. They then can be augmented with the OpenSocial JavaScript APIs, where they can fetch and post social data about friends and activities.
Does OpenSocial require any special markup languages or plug-ins?
No. OpenSocial uses standard JavaScript, HTML, and XML.
What resources do I need to create an OpenSocial gadget?
Other than a good idea and a few minutes to write JavaScript and HTML, you don't need any. Google will do all the hosting for you if you want, but you are also free to use your own servers.
Can OpenSocial apps use Flash?
Yes. Similar to Google Gadgets, it is possible to embed Flash content into a social app.
Can OpenSocial apps interact with other websites?
Yes, social apps have the ability to fully interact with outside 3rd party applications using standard web protocols.
What other JavaScript libraries can I use?
All of them! Dojo, Prototype, JQuery, GWT, etc.
What languages can I use on my server?
All of them! PHP, Ruby on Rails, Java, etc.
All of this is motivated by two reasons Everyone fears Facebook and they realized that the first developers that joined Facebbok when they opened their site won a lot of customers and now everyone has realized that social networks are here to stay and want a piece of that cake, that is why it has been so easy for them to join Google.
I've said a lot of times that all this information Google is getting may fire back at us pretty soon.


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