Google OpenSocial: The Open Common Services Approach

Techcrunch has announced that Google’s OpenSocial (formerly Maka Maka) will be launching this week:

[from Details Revealed: Google OpenSocial To Launch Thursday]

[…]

OpenSocial is a set of three common APIs, defined by Google with input from partners, that allow developers to access core functions and information at social networks:

• Profile Information (user data)
• Friends Information (social graph)
• Activities (things that happen, News Feed type stuff)

Hosts agree to accept the API calls and return appropriate data. Google won’t try to provide universal API coverage for special use cases, instead focusing on the most common uses. Specialized functions/data can be accessed from the hosts directly via their own APIs.

[…]

The timing of OpenSocial couldn’t be better. Developers have been complaining non stop about the costs of learning yet another markup launguage for every new social network platform, and taking developer time in creating and maintaining the code. Someone had to build a system to streamline this (as we said in the last few sentences in this post). And Facebook-fear has clearly driven good partners to side with Google. Developers will immediately start building on these APIs to get distribution across the impressive list of hosts above.

I argued several months ago, when Facebook launched their platform strategy, that building in openness to the ecosystem is essential (see The Architecture Of Sociality: Building In Openness).

What Google is doing is not completely open, since after all it is defining its own APIs — in collaboration with a collection of interested participants who are collectively interested in countering Facebook’s growing hegemony — but it is more open that Facebook’s, certainly. It is a more general set of services, one that in a sense creates a level playing feild for social platform companies who want to open their offerings, but cannot get the traction they would like since app developers can’t afford to target every platform.

Google has contrived a meta-platform strategy, which is benevolent so long as they don’t turn around — Microsoft style — and take advantage of their inside knowledge and control of the Open Social archietcture to crush competitors.

Google’s benevolence maybe all we have in lieu of a true open standard.