OpenSocial: Led By Google, Social Networks Band To Take On Facebook

As expected, the
much-discussed Google social play turns out to be an alliance with other
companies to "open up" social networks and their data to developers.

TechCrunch and the
New York
Times both have early news of an expected announcement tomorrow on how
Google, along with partners like Ning, Linked In, Friendster, and others, will
introduce a set of common APIs — called OpenSocial — to be used for getting data from and writing applications for social networks.

The idea, as the New York Times explains, is to help combat the number of
people who are developing for Facebook and not thinking of other social
"platforms." Says the NYT:

"It is going to forestall Facebook’s ability to get everyone writing just
for Facebook,” said a person with knowledge of the plans who asked to remain
anonymous because he was not authorized to speak on behalf of the alliance.
The group’s platform, which is called OpenSocial, is "compatible across all
the companies," that person said.

Google has already been trying to do this on its own — promote itself as a
development platform — as our
Google Gadget Ventures:
Get Paid To Develop Google Gadgets post from last June explains. But
enlisting others will help Google make Facebook seem closed and on the
defensive.

As I explained in the
Google To Pressure
Facebook To "Free" Social Data & Planning Google Earth World? post from
September:

At a time when some worry that Facebook is too closed, the Google rumors
make a lot of sense — that by pushing out whatever social information it has
now, Google can make a play that all social networks should spill their data,
thus robbing Facebook of its most important asset. But as I said in my
TechCrunch comments, that type of push will haunt Google when you’ve got
search developers asking why it doesn’t open up its massive search index.

That September post also revisits some of the recent changes Google has been
doing to Orkut to try and make it more attractive.

TechCrunch reports that "OpenSocial" will have more information posted
here tomorrow and will be:

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

John Battelle has what looks to be a draft press release
here.
Much discussion is
starting on Techmeme.

Postscript: Google’s sent me the following summary information about
the launch:

OpenSocial is a set of common APIs for building social applications on the
web.

Common APIs mean that developers only have to learn once in order to start
building social applications for multiple websites, and any website will be able
to implement OpenSocial and host social applications. OpenSocial will bring more
powerful and pervasive social capabilities to the web because developers will be
able to develop and distribute their applications more easily. Users will be
able to enjoy new social features faster and in more of the websites, web
applications, and social networks they use.

Benefits for Developers:

A new, broad distribution network for developers – i.e., all OpenSocial-enabled
websites

Learn once, write anywhere

Standards-based – HTML and JavaScript

Benefits for Web sites:

Faster development – more features, more quickly

Can engage a much larger pool of third party developers than they could
without a standard set of APIs

Can devote their resources to strategic projects rather than extensive
API and developer support

Selected Partners

hi5: Ramu Yalamanchi, Founder and CEO

LinkedIn: Adam Nash, Director of Product

Ning: Marc Andreesen, Co-founder

iLike: Ali Partovi, CEO

Slide: Max Levchin, founder and CEO