Just days after losing out to Microsoft  in a bid to grab a piece of Facebook, Google has launched a developer initiative to strengthen not only its own Orkut network but also a host of competing services.
Google's OpenSocial initiative includes a set of application programming interfaces (APIs) that developers can use to make their widgets work on such social-networking sites as LinkedIn, Plaxo, Ning, and Friendster.
Facebook rocked the social-networking world when it opened itself to third-party applications, a move that transformed Facebook from a MySpace also-ran to the social network of choice for the over-16 set.
The OpenSocial APIs are intended to allow the same sort of third-party development for the participating networks. It's a move that is delighting both the second-tier networks and developers of social-networking software.
Garden Without Walls
While it makes sense for developers to convert their applications or widgets to a site like Facebook or MySpace, which have huge reaches, developers are unable to justify the effort to create custom apps for every social network out there. The OpenSocial initiative is an attempt to break the "silos" of current social networks.
Google is spearheading the initiative because, "at its highest level, Google is a company that is dependent upon having a great Web platform," said Joe Kraus, Google's director of product management.
Ali Partovi, CEO of iLike, a social music site, called the move "the greatest thing that could've happened to us" and pointed out that deploying its application to "every other social network out there without an open standard would be much more expensive, harder to justify, and harder to prioritize."
Sites such as Facebook represent sort of "walled garden" versions of the Web. Users connect to each other, participate in groups, and build profiles all within the confines of the social network. The addition of applications and widgets inside that garden constitutes something of a Web operating system , albeit a proprietary one, said John McCrea, marketing VP for Plaxo.
"By supporting these OpenSocial APIs, we can carve out real estate that can be populated with any sorts" of applications, he said.
Privacy Concerns Raised Anew
But given the dominance of Facebook and MySpace, what impact will OpenSocial have, realistically? The plan could "potentially" have a serious impact on the social-networking landscape, Greg Sterling, principal analyst for Sterling Market Intelligence, said in an e-mail. "Developers will probably build for both OpenSocial and Facebook going forward to get maximum reach," he added. (continued...)
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