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.

Now Google???

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

Re:Now Google???

Spoken like someone with a high UID.

How many of those have you heard of?

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?

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?

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

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

Again, no!

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!

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

No SDK or Docs for Implementation, Though

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

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

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...

Google sent an open letter to Facebook:

Dear Facebook,

It's Cloberin' Time!

Yours truly,
The G-Unit Commandos.

Consolidation Phase

Social networking is peaking in growth, ergo it's entering a consolidation phase. Google's OpenSocial APi release is a brilliant counter-strategy (for once). FaceBook's API was a good gamble into a peaking market but I think Google has outdone them.

My prediction on FaceBook's growth rate BEFORE the Google OpenSocial API release.

http://www.realmeme.com/roller/page/realmeme?entry=social_networking_meme [realmeme.com]

"Will Facebook give in?"

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?

Localised site for Australia

Australia gets screwed over again. Even New Zealand got ONE localised MySpace site and Austria got TWO!!!

Load of Crap

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?

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.

Mixing Orkut + Myspace and facebook people

in the same api/environment ? oh bugger off !!!

any api/environment that has myspace in it caters to, well, myspace crowd ( good lord there is no other way to put it). i wouldnt think any average user of facebook would like to ( god forbid) mingle with myspacers in an environment, regardless of the api.

Total non-feature

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!

Social Networking in Corporate Intranet

With so much brouhaha about social networking, Web 2.0, networking analytics, etc. that the internet is spewing, I wonder where this is all leading to from a corporate intranet perspective. Am sure even if the CIO (or which ever CXO is responsible for IT & security) is not ready to open up these sites in his/her corporate network (by putting up site blockers, etc.), employees will find out a way to bring them in. So is it not prudent for the CIO to include social networking in the IT strategy of the organization?

OTOH, for the sales & marketing managers this could be a god send. It would be even very helpful for the product managers. These social networking mechanisms connect the customers directly with the product managers as shown by the GM, Lenovo, etc. blogs which led to the development of new products based on the direct inputs from customers to the product managers! Youtube kind of sites offering a very easy means of creating effective viral marketing.

The traditional CRM strategies that help the marketing, sales & service people need to be upgraded to include social networking. This indeed is happening with lots of talks about CRM 2.0! *not again* All that CRM 2.0 says is to enable customers to connect directly with the business in a much more integrated manner.

With the raise of open source business apps like compiere, openbravo & especially since SugarCRM getting GPLed, CRM & ERP systems have suddenly gotten within the reach of numerous SMBs who hitherto could not afford to splurge millions on systems like SAP or Siebel.

Now Google's OpenSocial being supported by SugarCRM from its launch puts a lot of pressure on the traditional CRM approach as well as vendors.

All that remains now is to come out with an architecture [cognizant.com] for integrating social computing apps with the traditional enterprise applications.

Will Facebook give in?

Not until MySpace solves their spam problem.

OpenID! Please??

I first heard about this yesterday, and went "Oh cool, so Google's finally implementing OpenID. Maybe they'll do for that what they did for Jabber."

You see, Google Talk is a Jabber IM service. That means that while the Google Talk client itself probably only works with Google, you can, in fact, talk to anyone, on any domain, on any Jabber server, from your Google Talk account, and vice versa. It's IM, but with the decentralization, flexibility, and possibility of competition that you find in email.

Well, OpenID is like that, but for authentication and profiles. I can sign up for an OpenID anywhere, and it will work anywhere that supports OpenID. It means that any site that would otherwise require free registration can simply require an OpenID. It's like single sign on, but your authentication server can be anywhere, and can be tied to an account... and you can use any authentication method, really. Most people would use usernames/passwords, I'd probably use a PGP key or something.

Anyway...

It's not OpenID.

That's fine, the OpenID "standards" are a mess, but...

It's not even a replacement for OpenID. If anything, it's a replacement for Passport, but you have a Google account instead of an MSN account. Ok, yes, I can access my social networking data from any random website, as part of a web app -- but what if I don't want to be on Orkut?

In other words...

Why have they replaced a few tiny walled gardens (MySpace, Facebook) with a gated community? Why not just open it up, especially if you're going to pretend it's "open"?

third time's a charm

smells like web3.0 is looming in the air.

Re:a dba eh? glad you stuck to that..

Back in the day we wrote applications that were supposed to actually make use of all that computing power users payed $1500 dollars for. We didn't think "server side" or "client side", we wrote our applications to damn well run on the user's machine!