an ordinary blog — andr3.net

(Last week's news, but still...)

First of all, it's a misleading name — Open Social. After they got Brad Fitzpatrick, author of the iconic Thoughts on the Social Graph, by choosing this name people get the idea they may be attacking the concepts described in that article.

But they're not.

What is it, then?

In short, Google's Open Social are APIs which social networks (Hi5, Last.fm, SAPO Spot, etc.) may choose to implement to allow third party developers to create web applications that will run on their users' profiles. In layman's terms, it's a way to do what Facebook did, but for all social networks out there who decide to jump on the bandwagon, only with a certain twist:

• Open Social is a javascript API
• Doesn't require developers to learn specific languages (like in Facebook)
• Doesn't have the lock-in factor that fb does
• Every social network can now choose to implement it allowing all webapps written for Open Social to be "ported" to their network!

It doesn't solve the utopia dream desire for each user to truly own their online identity & relationships, nor does it solve the problem of portability, at least not out-of-the-box.

One may argue that it allows certain apps to be created - and ported to different networks - that would allow this trade of information (microformats being key players in this). But that depends on whether apps will be able to extract information from/to other websites. Javascript is pretty powerful, but when it comes to cross-site-scripting (XSS), we have to get inventive.

Now what?

If you own a network and you're willing to join the party, you have to implement the Service Provider Interface (SPI), which apparently isn't available yet. Get in touch with them...

For us, developers, it's time to explore the docs and play a little in the orkut sandbox. As other networks expose their Open Social APIs, things will start to get - even more - interesting. But please... a word of caution to everyone: don't rush it into production. Learn from other people mistakes. As soon as the announcement was made, even before the website went live, plaxo officials were already posting a message to the Social Network Portability mailing list saying they would have it implemented by Friday. The result? First OpenSocial Application Hacked Within 45 Minutes [techcrunch]. Now the question is... is this an OpenSocial or a Plaxo flaw?

(Can someone, please, pronounce the death of Web 2.0?)

Further Reading

Read what some of the experts are saying:

• Open, by Jeremy Keith
• OpenSocial and portability by Tantek Çelik

Apparently, there's still work for Brad to do over there. :)