On Thursday last week Google launched OpenSocial, which is a development platform that allows developers to create applications for a range of social networks. This platform is pretty much like the proprietary Facebook Platform, however the major difference is that OpenSocial allows developers to tap into a multitude of social networks unlike Facebook.
Why OpenSocial?
Since May this year, Facebook allowed developers to develop third party applications for Facebook. The reasons for this, among many others, was to increase the functionality of Facebook, user retention and allowing users to have almost everything in one place.
OpenSocial allows developers to access multiple social networks. This evens the playing field and gives other social networks the opportunity to offer its users more through third party applications. It also gives developers a wider audience for the applications they develop.
The 3 API Sets
There are 3 standard API sets, which are used when building an application with OpenSocial: (OpenSocial documentation)
- People & Friends Data API
This allows client applications to view and update People Profiles and Friend relationships, client applications can request a list of a user’s friends and query the content in an existing profile. - Activities Data API
This allows client applications to view and publish “actions” of the user and/or their friends. Client application can use the API to create new entries, edit or delete existing entries, and view lists of entries. - Persistence Data API
This allows client applications to view and update key/value content, client application can edit or delete content for an existing application, user, or gadget instance, and query the content in an existing feed.
What Does This Mean?
In plain English this is going to allow businesses (developers, marketers, start-ups, etc.) to offer their services to an even larger number of people across multiple platforms. Just because OpenSocial has more reach than Facebook, I wouldn’t switch completely. I would instead develop for both of them, I will cover this issue in a post later on this week.
Conclusion
At first I was really skeptical about OpenSocial, however after seeing screenshots of some of the applications on other social networks, I am really impressed. I will be playing around with OpenSocial as soon as I get a chance and post my thoughts on the development side of the platform.
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Tags: social networking, web 2.0, web development
I wonder if FB will ever buy into this……………
StevenMcD: I don’t think they should be in a rush, they should let it play out and see what the uptake of OpenSocial is. If it begins to affect its platform then I am sure they will. Facebook does have plans to start opening up, it doesn’t have to follow Google’s lead.