OpenSocial to spread apps across social networking sites

Stephen Withers
Thursday, 01 November 2007 03:01

Your IT - Home IT

Google's new OpenSocial API promises developers a mechanism that will allow applications to work with more than one social networking site, but at this stage the Big Two - Facebook and MySpace - aren't joining the fun.

At present, sites such as Facebook provide an API allowing the creation of applications on that platform. There is no portability between sites, and ideas must be re-implemented. This means a company that has developed a successful application for MySpace faces a major effort to port it to Facebook, for example.

OpenSocial would reduce the effort required to create such applications for different platforms by standardising functions for accessing profile, friend and activity information.

Apart from Google's own Orkut, participating social networks include Friendster, hi5 and Ning. Developers supporting the standard include iLike and Slide.

Also significant is the business focus of some members of the OpenSocial camp, notably LinkedIn and Plaxo. Furthermore, Oracle and Salesforce.com are onboard, so we can expect to see some serious business applications.

On one hand, OpenSocial reduces the points of difference between participating social networks; on the other, it will increase the range of applications available to users of those networks. On balance, it will probably be a net benefit for smaller networks struggling to compete with Facebook and MySpace.

What's in it for Google? Apart from the fact that it operates a small social networking site and was beaten to a stake in Facebook by Microsoft, one possibility is that it could leverage OpenSocial to improve the effectiveness of AdSense advertising on participating networks. For example, if a certain ad is clicked on a particular individual's page, it might be effective to deliver the same ad to friends' pages.

An open API is by its nature open for anyone to use, but showing it is a team player can't hurt Google's chances to stitch up advertising deals with participating social networks, counteracting Microsoft's sole-supplier status with Facebook.

The OpenSocial API will be published later today on Google Code.