Sunday | 12 October, 2008
CIO
OpenSocial targets social apps API 'balkanization'
Google's Scott McMullan talks about OpenSocial
Juan Carlos Perez (IDG News Service) 22 November, 2007 07:28:48

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Is OpenSocial a solution in search of a problem? Are developers really clamoring for something like this? How many social-networking sites are out there today for which you can or would want to write applications? There don't seem to be that many APIs for social-networking sites out there.

There are a lot of social-networking sites. There's a long tail of them. There are a lot of big ones and small ones. In addition, my personal perspective is that the social nature of a lot of different applications is also an equally important part of the story. It's about the social features that we all find very compelling in social-networking sites and we'd like to empower those across the Web. So getting ahead of the problem and creating a standard that we all can rally around to make that happen, and help channel that developer energy, is a big part of it. And these are early days for social-network platforms.

In the real world, won't developers ultimately find themselves having to tweak and retool applications so that they are appropriate for different sites, because, say, the concept, the policies and the look-and-feel of Facebook are different from the ones of LinkedIn?

You certainly might, in the same way a Web developer has to take into account different browsers. There can be devils in the details, but hopefully [with OpenSocial] the vast majority of the effort is certainly not in porting. It's in perhaps the last 1 percent of tweaking.

At this point, should developers start writing applications based on OpenSocial or rather wait, kick the tires and send Google feedback?

We've got an Orkut sandbox and there are other sandboxes for other sites coming online. When you're at the sandbox stage only, we're talking about, "Come, kick the tires, participate, learn, test, but know that the sandbox may have an API [revision] before it reaches production status." A big part of it is the policies and the production hardening that this requires for our partners, for anyone who implements this. It's something that takes time. We want to get that open feedback loop going with the world as soon as possible.

Is Orkut [Google's own social-networking site] now fully enabled for OpenSocial?

It's still in sandbox stage.

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