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.""

Comments

no future

[Anonymous Coward]

I used "the" google api once, spent a bit of time on it,
then they pulled it -- never again.

Re:Open source.... why bother?

[garcia]

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...

In the end, the users are what makes Google money but they aren't the ones that Google is really trying to market to here. Popular social networking sites are a marketers dream. Google wants an open API so that it can crawl and offer up data to those that want to advertise to this wide open market. Facebook is pretty closed when it comes to what they offer by API and while Google will follow that it doesn't meant that the other social networking sites will solidify their borders in the same way.

Please do note the two top items of the list: profile information and "friend" (links) information. I know of marketers trolling Facebook groups and collecting as much data as they can on the users of the site in order to find a way, in the future, to market to them. If they could do this with an API instead of screen scraping, it would make their lives a lot easier.

Scary? Yes.

Re:Clone facebook

[cromar]

I think the solution ... is not more social networking sites, but rather a standard ... protocol that they all can share

It's always bothered me that these sites more or less do the same thing. A new/better one comes along and people move there even though it is pretty much the same as the old one. Then I have to enter my profile info again - something I really hate doing. Centralizing all the information bothers me too. A "service scraper" would be a good solution, but I've always been tantalized by the idea of using a p2p protocol for a truly open, ubiquitous "friend site" experience..

Re:Marc Andreessen has a great write-up about it h

[Andy Dodd]

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.