Google's OpenSocial Platform Releases

shadowmage13 writes "Google just announced that starting tonight, developers can start writing applications using the social API for Orkut, MySpace, Engage.com, Friendster, hi5, Hyves, imeem, LinkedIn, Ning, Oracle, Plaxo, Salesforce.com, Six Apart, Tianji, Viadeo, and XING at http://code.google.com/apis/opensocial. Will Facebook give in?" There is quite a bit of analysis of this announcement available in yesterday's discussion.

Comments

Now Google???

[rukidding]

So now even Google is jumping into this whole web 2.0 thing?

Re:Now Google???

[Pazy]

Why be suprised at google, they will be opening there own coffee shop franchise soon. Maybe fund a few space flights. They could do anything and I wouldent even blink anymore lol

Re:Now Google???

[Seumas]

I've already given up. The internet is just turning into one giant party phone. Like the chat lines they used to advertise in the middle of the night in the late 1980s. If you can cash in on that sad state of affairs, I guess you might as well. Can't blame any company that does. Perhaps some day that will fade away and the internet will become something slightly less sophomoric and navel-gazing. Yes, part of the internet still serves a purpose other than trying to score with teenage girls and watching the video at 2girls1cup.com, but not much.

Re:Now Google???

[owlnation]

Yes, and sadly the one thing they seem not to be doing, is the one thing they should be doing -- developing the next gen of search. We are still a long long way away from adequate search.

Re:Now Google???

[4D6963]

Yes, part of the internet still serves a purpose other than trying to score with teenage girls and watching the video at 2girls1cup.com, but not much.

Thanks for the link! ;-)

Re:Now Google???

[Photar]

Spoken like someone with a high UID.

How many of those have you heard of?

[m50d]

Really? I count two, three if you include google. And "different from myspace" has been one of facebook's main attractions. This won't put any pressure on facebook.

Re:How many of those have you heard of?

[Albanach]

I'm not sure which two you mean? Myspace - 100 million accounts Livejournal - 14 million accounts Orkut - 67 million accounts Firendster - 50 million accounts LinkedIn - 15 million accounts Salesforce.com - 1 million subscribers Tianji - 700,000 members For context, Wikipedia reports that Facebook has 42 million accounts as of October 2007. Now there's certainly some variation, and probably lots of duplication amongst accounts, but seriously, these are big sites, with huge traffic figures. TO dismiss it as one or two and the rest you've never heard seems a tad petulant.

Re:How many of those have you heard of?

[iluvcapra]

I think I have a friendster account, I made it in 2005 when all the pretty young things in Hollywood were using it for their "social" (sing. n.). I haven't used it since the week I made it, I doubt I could even log into it now (everybody went to myspace after about a month, and then to facebook, and nobody ever checks their page anyways). I suspect the number of accounts many social networking sites report come with the same caveat. I think the real question is "How many logins have at least one access per week? Per day?" The real gem is owning a website that people use every day and keep current with real information.

The salesforce.com numbers are the most interesting, since the contacts that particular corpus tracks are recorded by paying subscribers, and are used in commercial transactions, and not by vapid teeners to promote their band or unite with other Gossip Girls fans.

Of course, this information is really useful if you're selling cheap amps or advertising time for the CW, but considering the quality of the source, you might as well be using wikipedia to find the exchange rate of the dollar.

Re:How many of those have you heard of?

[trawg]

How ridiculous and arrogant. How can you accuse the parent of such things when most probably he's not in the target market group for these sites? There's nothing ridiculous or arrogant about it - it's then even more petulant of him to just dismiss them as the GP did if he's not in the target market, because then it's much more likely that he has absolutely no knowledge of the subject matter that he's opining on.

It'd be like me not knowing anything about web servers and then hearing that Google use Apache as their web server software and SmallCompanyX does too, and then assuming that noone else uses Apache at all.

Re:How many of those have you heard of?

[SEE]

Six Apart is the parent company of LiveJournal, just like Google is the parent company of Orkut and News Corp. is the parent company of MySpace. Now, whether Six Apart's participation means LiveJournal participation . . .

Re:How many of those have you heard of?

[SnowZero]

Anyone who drives on 101 has seen salesforce.com... How ridiculous and arrogant. Some of us only have to drive on 85 to get to work. How dare you!

Premier launch applications

[The Clockwork Troll]

Premier applications launching on the platform include "GlobalPoke", "iReallyReallyReallyLike", and the sure-to-entertain "Biggest Fucking Super Duper Wall Ever"

Again, no!

[DragonWriter]

What is it with Slashdot headlines and the idea that "release" is an intransitive verb such that "X releases" means approximately the same thing as "X became available"?

"Release" is a transitive verb. The subject is the thing letting something out, the object is the thing let out. "Google's OpenSocial Platform Releases", no, sorry, if you say that, you need to say what it is that Google's OpenSocial platform releases. "Google Releases OpenSocial Platform", yes.

Re:Again, no!

[davidsyes]

It is NOT unpossible, becuase it is not irreleaseble...

Re:Again, no!

[shadowmage13]

You're right :) It was actually just a typo-- i actually meant to say "Google's OpenSocial Platform Released"

No SDK or Docs for Implementation, Though

[duerra]

Sure, Google released documentation for how to write these kinds of apps, but they have yet to release any documentation for sites looking to implement the APIs. This kinda limits its proliferation. I work for a fairly large social network, and thus far we have not been able to even get started on writing an implementation OpenSocial yet.

Duh

[Mr_Silver]

Will Facebook give in?

No.

Time and history has shown us that when you're number 1, you don't give in until you absolutely have to - because you don't need to.

That time has not yet come...

Re:Duh

[owlnation]

Yes. But they aren't currently number one. And they most certainly won't be after the others network together. But thanks for playing anyway...

Re:Duh

[yashinka]

Perhaps they don't have the most accounts, but with the huge amount of fake accounts on MySpace, that figure is meaningless. I, like many people I know, have accounts on MySpace, Friendster and maybe a few others, but I only log in when I have friend requests.

Facebook has the best UI and it already has tons of great apps. Until those apps move and all my friends move and users start changing back, I don't think Facebook has anything to worry about. Facebook has the most used photo app and events app on the internet, and those are just two of many. I think it's safe to say they are number one for now.

Re:Duh

[Anonymous Coward]

If you add "in the US" to every sentence you wrote, then, you'd be accurate.

Facebook vs Google

[mfh]

Google is uniting these other sites because they each have something to gain from that alliance... new segments.

Facebook has nothing to gain because people from each of those segments are already on Facebook.

Facebook only has something to lose by joining that alliance... control over how their medium is dished up and the browser interstitials and advertisement revenue. My dollar is on Facebook for the long haul, unless they are shut down due to code theft (which is actually still in limbo right now, if I understand correctly).

"Will Facebook give in?"

[Thwomp]

Would Microsoft be happy with this? After all they're sworn enemies of Google. Remember Microsoft has invested in Facebook, how much control/influence does it have on the company?

Load of Crap

[z-j-y]

It's Friday evening, and I don't have any friend, real or virtual. So I actually watched that retarded video. (highly recommended for a good laugh)

All it is supposed to be, is so that you can write some stupid client side gadget, and you gadget can be run on every participating websites. BFD.

Each site is still an isolated island. You gadget doesn't run across sites, it only runs on every sites. It is not for sharing anything or interacting with anybody among different sites.

I've assumed that OpenSocial is about connecting users on different sites, probably most people did too, just from the misleading name and the hypes. But there's nothing open or social about it.

One might argue that eventually Google will do that. I highly doubt it. What's in it for Google? All I am seeing at this point, is that they want to label FaceBook as a party pooper therefore it should be outcasted. How social is that.

Google Authentication?

[crf00]

Authenticating to the OpenSocial People service

You can access both public and private feeds using the OpenSocial People data API. Public feeds don't require any authentication, but they are read-only. If you want to view Friends then your client needs to authenticate before requesting private feeds. It can authenticate using either of two approaches: ClientLogin username/password authentication or AuthSub proxy authentication.

How could I authenticate myself into other social websites like Friendster then?
Authentication is one of the most important aspect to make OpenSocial open, I think.

Re:Oh my!

[Silver Gryphon]

In the future, you could use this as a painful lesson that sometimes Google is a great source of information on the random link posted by an unknown person. I speak from experience as one who has been burned in a similar manner.

A Google search for the domain name reveals a warning that even I won't ignore.

Digg - Funny reaction to 2Girls1Cup
Warning: DO NOT visit 2girls1cup.com to see what they are watching. Seriously. Don't. Some things, once seen, cannot be unseen. ...

Total non-feature

[tjstork]

While I'm sure that there are some people that like to have their networking links travel from place to place, I think this is a feature that is really designed to benefit on-line marketers more than end users. Developers that write for these APIs, are really sort of fools, because ultimately, they are giving away to Google and others information that they should really actually -pay for-. If I were lucky enough to put some social site together with millions of hits, the last thing I'd want to would be to give away all of my behavior information to Google. If they want it, then they can write me a fricking check.

MY CUSTOMERS! MINE, MINE, MINE!

Re:BAD BAD LINK!

[4D6963]

Nah, this thing is fake to a certain extent. I've never seen human poop looking like that, they probably stuffed some brown stuff up their bottom and "crapped" it.

Re:Oh my!

[kv9]

Warning: DO NOT visit 2girls1cup.com to see what they are watching. Seriously. Don't. Some things, once seen, cannot be unseen. ... there, fixed that for you.