“Making the Web Social”

Sounds like a pretty lofty plan, but that was the goal of the founding members of OpenSocial said Jeff Huber, senior vice president of engineering, Google. This is a technology that I feel is beginning to alter the way that people interact with the Internet, and is also effecting business. This post will give a brief history, show some current utilization, and then ponder into the void of the future to predict the evolution of OpenSocial and related technologies.

Short History

In 2007 Facebook made a bold step by releasing its API to developers to create applications on their platform. They did this because they soon realized that once users sign-up and start linking with their friends, they will eventually get bored. So adding the ability to continuously add new features that allow users to connect was a great plan. The problem with this scenario is that there are more than just 1 Social networking community (believe it or not!) In some regions, Facebook is not king, plus there are numerous niche community sites (add link) that do not want the same generic reach that Facebook offers, but they do want to have the ability to add applications and gadgets to their social community.

Enter OpenSocial. OpenSocial is basically a set of web standards that give programers the freedom to write code for a cool app, and have the ability to integrate it with a number of social communities and web sites. This makes developing a application much less of a daungting task, as you write it once, and instantly have an audience in the millions.

Some of the early adapters of this technology were virtual Tourist, myspace.com, Linkedin, Salesforce, Ning, hi5, FotoFlexer, iLike.com, orkut.com, RockYou.com, Slide.com, Flixter and Viadeo.com.

So what?

Open social has been deemed the main competitor to Facebook as it allows for one identity to be shared across several web based services. With the future of computer development transitioning to online software as a service, it will be interesting to see if there will be one dominant player, or if we will continue to juggle “just another inbox”

Have you noticed open social technology?