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Google's Plans for a Social API
NewsCloud writes "After tonight's Breaking Open Facebook with Free Open Source Software, TechCrunch reports Google plans to announce an open API for social networking tomorrow. "OpenSocial is a set of three common APIs, defined by Google with input from partners, that allow developers to access core functions and information at social networks: 1) Profile Information (user data) 2) Friends Information (social graph) and 3) Activities (things that happen, News Feed type stuff)" Says Om Malik: "OpenSocial attacks Facebook where it is the weakest (and the strongest): its quintessential closed nature...Even if you take Facebook out of the equation, the task of writing and adapting widgets for the every increasing number of social platforms was going to be turn into a colossal mess.""
One day we'll judge how far along a project is by whether it has a social networking client or not.
When I told a charming, beautiful young woman she could plug into my public API, I got slapped!
Gee, thanks for nothing, social networking...
So now at a party I can ask people which API they prefer when I try to interact with them?
the thing which has always put me off social networking is that they are so uncompatibale with each other, and you can bet your bottom dollar that if you are on one system, someone else will be on the other.
I just wish someone would clone facebook (and/or myspace,bebo etc) and release it under the AGPL.
www.tdobson.net #### Dare to Dream #### blog.tdobson.net
This is kind-of a follow-up to his in-depth thoughts on the Facebook platform that I found really useful, too.
So...you're introducing yet another platform to worry about?
Anyone else getting annoyed with all the no-profit, go-nowhere project announcements coming out of Google every other week?
I *get* what Google is trying to do here. However, since the majority of Facebook's users couldn't care less if the apps they're using are open, I'm not really sure what the point is...
I used "the" google api once, spent a bit of time on it,
then they pulled it -- never again.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orkut
Anyone else read that "OpenFacial attacks Socialbook"? Some sort of weird Japanese geek porn?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Step one - applications that work in a social network. e.g. Facebook apps.
Step two - applications that work on lots of different social networks using certain common features. This is where OpenSocial is taking us.
Step three - applications that work across multiple social networks, so that they can include your contacts from Facebook, Livejournal, Slashdot and LinkedIn.
Step four - roll-your-own sites that allow you to provide your own basic social infoamtion (using FOAF, OpenID, etc.) so that you don't need to be a member of a social site to produce or consume social network information.
We're a way off yet - but it looks like we're moving in the right direction.
My Journal
OK, now I get it: it's like Esperanto. This will be HUGE. I remember all the confusion people had thirty years ago when we had to worry about things like "English" and "French". The addition of that last little language solved EVERYTHING!
who invents the new stuff then?
Startups.
can we be able to have friends on different community sites without requiring our own accounts on them?
as in, a kind of distributed login system between community sites?
so i create a profile on site A, and my friend on site B, and i can read and write stuff on his, and him on mine?
im so tired of having to write those profiles all the time as friends jump to the community of the month...
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
Well, Google could lead by example and make Orkut compatible with their open API. Open up Orkut and show us how it's done, Google!
Hey baby, what's your SYN?
My intelligence insults itself.
This is exactly what social networking needs -- a way to make it open and interoperable like Jabber, rather than you-have-to-be-on-the-same-system-as-your-friends like AIM. I hope they succeed. Hopefully they'll get MySpace on board - that'll make a few chairs fly in Redmond.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
From the second link:
"With the Facebook platform, app developers build to Facebook-proprietary languages and APIs such as FBML (Facebook Markup Language) and FQL (Facebook Query Language) -- those languages and APIs don't work anywhere other than Facebook -- and then the apps can only run within Facebook. In contrast, with Open Social, app developers can build to standard HTML and Javascript, and their apps can then run in any Open Social container."
One of the biggest reasons "MySpace haters" like myself prefer facebook is that Facebook enforces a relatively "clean" user interface for profiles.
While the Facebook platform has reduced that "cleanness" a bit (too much flexibility was given to app developers, and hence some apps look just plain FUGLY.), the thought of app developers being given full-blown HTML and JS as opposed to a restricted markup language that prevents them from going too far in terms of altering Facebook's UI scares me. If you don't believe me, look at the cesspool of ugliness known as MySpace - it's a perfect example of why there is such a thing as too much flexibility.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
When I told a charming, beautiful young woman she could plug into my public API, I got slapped!
Probably because you didn't expose an Adapter Class interface!
What if what attracted me to use Facebook in the first place is the fact that only those whom I authorize can view my profile data? How are they going to achieve that with an open platform? If they require authorization, for example, then the users need to be using that open platform as well, and by extension, all users need to be using that open platform. Guess what you have then? Another Facebook!
could some one explain what the compatibility issues is. I mean granted being and anti social basement dweller, I've never used a "Social Networking" site but aren't they just like a mix of a crappy blog and geocities. What is there to be compatible with.
The perversity of the Universe tends towards a maximum. - O'Toole's Corollary
Facebook
Can't find any reason to ever use Facebook. For anything. If I want to be in touch with friends, I call them. Usually over PSTN, even though I'd prefer sip. Or, perhaps, I send them an e-mail of message over icq or jabber.
And why would I want to become part of a soon-to-be or already-become mega-corp who won't just own whatever I add there (pictures, images), but also most reasonably use it for adapting commercial on to me, in a fashion, human kind isn't really used to. Sure sports channels have commercials about sport junk, but what's happening today with google and facebook and other huge information-, search- and behavior collectors is simply scaring me. I don't want it. I don't want to become part of it.
Livejournal
Kids these days, just have to blog. They really have a need to express themselves, or rather, to get heard or maybe just "become someone". Sure it's hard to grasp how big the earth is, and everything that's out there, but most people really don't give a shit about what you think. Really, I'm just being honest to you.
Linkedin (never heard before), digg, delicio.us, youtube, etc
Seriously, you use the toys for some time, get tired of them, and finally move along.
Does people really not think about what's going on? Surely, the internet is useful and good in a whole lot of ways, but what traditionally was articles in news papers, normal phone calls and snail-mail letters which always was private (well, what organizations did index all these things?).
Today, all of this is on the web. All we do is there (especially with blogs, social networks, chats etc).
Companies and governments are indexing and analyzing our behavior and ideas in a scaring fashion, yet people just go with the flow and accept to become parts of it through these sites where their privacy is gone (do they even read the eula?) and where they become lab rats for these conglomerates understanding of how to easier get us to listen to them. By knowing how we are, and what's our weak points, they will know how to make us believe them and do what they tell us to (of course not directly, but indirectly). They'll know how to create trends and subcultures. To become our friends and to make us lower our guards, to let them into our lives even more, to sell us stuff, or to gently make us think in patterns they have laid out.
I'm sure Facebook was initially a fun thing, a small nice social network. But once it became large, I'm pretty sure it became "a google". In other words "do no evil", yet owning most interesting information in the world for later use... What use? Necessarily non-evil?
Microsoft just invested in it. Have Microsoft ever done anything non-evil, or at least, good (not talking about SW quality)? I don't trust them, and I've seen lots of disgusting things they've done. I think I can grasp at least parts of what they're capable of.
I'm a bit scared of what's happening. And I might sound like an 80 year old whiner who'll get -5 for whatever troll/out-of-topic or so, but I'm really a M.Sc. at 27 working as development manager. I, for one, should be one of those with a Facebook page with photos of my latest trip to some sunny place...
Am I the only one? Seriously, am I?
You are missing the point. If you have an open standard for a social networking protocol, that means you can make the client whatever you want. If you want plain, original facebook like interface, you get a client that shows just that. When you load it up, it only asks for the basic information from the people you are connected to.
You highlight the problem with too much flexibility within a CLOSED client. With an open client, its like gaim or pidgin, it connects to all the protocols, but the message box looks like whatever you theme it to.
What we are lacking right now are open protocols to the data stored in myspace/facebook. They have obvious incentives NOT to open it up, but facebook apps leave the door cracked.
"how can they call it a MINE if everything here is THEIRS?!?!" -Straight Jacket
Except that in this case, the app returns pure HTML/JS that is "embedded" in the container. Thus it can easily override whatever styling guidelines that container uses.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
And who buys up the startups to claim their ideas?
I don't think I need to answer that for you.
"I think an etch-a-sketch with an ethernet port would beat IE7 in web standards compliance."
> Google plans to announce an open API for social networking
Yeah, it's called your mouth.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
There is a limit to how far you can go with individually separated information silos such as Facebook and MySpace.
Parity: What to do when the weekend comes.
Google Launches OpenSocial to Spread Social Applications Across the Web
MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA -- November 1, 2007 - Google, Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) today announced the release of OpenSocial -- a set of common APIs for building social applications across the web -- for developers of social applications and websites that want to add social features. OpenSocial will unleash more powerful and pervasive social capabilities for the web, empowering developers to build far-reaching applications that users can enjoy regardless of the websites, web applications, or social networks they use. The release of OpenSocial marks the first time that multiple social networks have been made accessible under a common API to make development and distribution easier and more efficient for developers.
The proliferation of unique APIs across dozens of social websites is forcing developers to choose which ones to write applications for - and then spend their time writing separately for each. OpenSocial gives developers of social applications a single set of APIs to learn for their application to run on any OpenSocial-enabled website. By providing these simple, standards-based technologies, OpenSocial will speed innovation and bring more social features to more places across the web. Users win too: they get more interesting, engaging, or useful features faster.
"The web is fundamentally better when it's social, and we're only just starting to see what's possible when you bring social information into different contexts on the web," said XXXX. "There's a lot of innovation that will be spurred simply by creating a standard way for developers to run social applications in more places. With the input and iteration of the community, we hope OpenSocial will become a standard set of technologies for making the web social."
Learn Once, Reach Across the Web
One of the most important benefits of OpenSocial is the vast distribution network that developers will have for their applications. The sites that have already committed to supporting OpenSocial -- Website Partner A, Website Partner B, Website Partner C, etc. -- represent an audience of well over 100 million users globally. Critical for time- and resource-strapped developers is being able to "learn once, write anywhere" -- learn the OpenSocial APIs once and then build applications that work with any OpenSocial-enabled websites.
Several developers, including Gadget Partner Z, Gadget Partner Y, Gadget Partner X, etc., have already built applications that use the OpenSocial APIs. Starting today, a developer sandbox is available at http://sandbox.orkut.com/ so developers can go in and start testing the OpenSocial APIs. The goal is to have developers build applications in the sandbox so they can deploy on Orkut and ultimately other OpenSocial sites.
More Social In More Places
The existence of this single programming model also helps websites who are eager to satisfy their users' interest in social features. More developers building social applications more easily translates directly into more features more quickly for websites.
"Orkut has tens of millions of passionate users who are constantly clamoring for new ways to have fun with their friends and express themselves through Orkut," said Amar Gandhi, group product manager for Orkut, Google's social networking service. "By using OpenSocial to open up Orkut as a platform for any developer, we can tap into the vast creativity of the community and make new features available to our users frequently."
The common method that OpenSocial provides for hosting social applications means that websites can engage a much larger pool of third party developers than they could otherwise. They can direct resources that might have gone to maintaining a proprietary API and supporting its developer community to other projects.
Because OpenSocial removes the hassle from developing for individual websites, developers can unleash their creativity anywhere that catches thei
http://affelio.us/en/
Almost the same thing.
Seems it's official: MySpace is joining Google OpenSocial . This is a huge boost for OpenSocial API. I'm looking forward to see all the great 3rd party applications from Facebook also on MySpace. Obviously there is a huge incentive for these application providers to embrace the OpenSocial API: Millions of MySpace users are joining in!
You mean just like instant messaging?
In Soviet Russia, open API plugs into you.
Emacs is the next logical step from pico/nano.
I basically use emacs like I use pico - simple editing, search and replace, and most importantly syntax highlighting. (Yes, nano can do syntax highlighting too, but it is not as advanced.)
Monotone is so 1960s.