OpenSocial

While working on my tiny my-2do gadget I came across something called OpenSocial. I had maybe once heard something about it but otherwise I had now idea what it was. I decided to dive into it a little for my own knowledge, and write about it here for others' knowledge.

API's
As you might have noticed, many social websites, such as LinkedIn, Facebook, etc, enable third parties to develop applications for their site. These applications can integrate into the social-ness of the website (ie get friends list and stuff) via so called API's (Application Programming Interfaces). The problem was that each site used their own API's, so unless they had too much time on their hand programmers had to choose.

OpenSocial: Open, Social, StandardOpenSocial is pushed forward by Google, but is for the web, not just for Google. It enables (web) developers to build applications for all social sites (that adapt to OpenSocial) at once. The developer now only has to learn about the OpenSocial API's to make an application work on all platforms.

Who's in?< Opensocial.org shows a list of social sites that are exposing the OpenSocial API's to developers. Interesting names are LinkedIn, MySpace, Hyves, iGoogle, Orkut. The big name that is missing obviously: Facebook, although apparently there is some adapter software you can use to run your OpenSocial app on Facebook as well.

Hit?
I could not find a video about OpenSocial itself that was less than 2 years old. Maybe this is because the original videos are still relevant enough? Also a lot of webpages discussing OpenSocial are of comparable age. Also, in the beginning, security issues came up.

Alive?
Is OpenSocial still alive? Yes, I think it still is! For instance MySpace announced this month it will be providing an OpenSocial .Net container and keep on supporting OpenSocial.

Interesting?
Yes, OpenSocial is interesting, at least for me, because you can reach a lot of people as a developer, and you can make use of existing platforms and libraries. Furthermore, the main techniques you have to know for OpenSocial are HTML and JavaScript. Check.