Wednesday, October 31, 2007

OpenSocial - Social Networking 2.0

Google's plunging yet again into the social networks, this time with a much bigger and serious perspective. Things have been changing in this field since the past 12 years when Classmates.com was launched. Last few years, especially since 2004, this concept has taken a whole new dimension with terms like orkutting and myspaced becoming commonly used jargons.
Last few days have especially been interesting. Microsoft's new found interest in this finally was out when they entered into a whopping $240 million deal for a mere 1.6% stake in Facebook - a move criticized by many by terming it as 'not making sense'.
And now New York Times reports that Google's launching OpenSocial - which gives a whole new perspective on this - a more serious one. In a nutshell, through OpenSocial, Google's will provide 3 common APIs which would allow application developers to build their own applications using an array of hosts which include LinkedIn, hi5, Friendster, Plaxo and Ning, along with Google's own social networking service, Orkut. Understandably Facebook and MySpace were not there. The kind of impact it will have will only be clear in the future, but this standardization effort of Google might just result in some interesting sequence of events in the near future.
Update: Some serious momentum for OpenSocial APIs as MySpace and Bebo have too joined now!

2 comments:

Gaurav Goel said...

Hey apurv .. i was just a bit busy with my application and the new profile i am going to work .. so just was able to keep abreat myself with blogging ...

Just read your blog about SN 2.0 .. and you will be surprised how seriously is taken in by IT service providing companies these days . Yes i am talking about the company i work in ..i will tell you dude they are talking it damn seriously this time .. they already builded up a blogging portal ...trying to come up with thier own framework.. they first trying to link companies community then might look further .. there were many internal project such project infinity and many others are in line.. Our CTO seems damn serious and is taking huge steps to to build upon web 2.0 technologies ...
I can not reveal all things here :) he he

@purV said...

@Gaurav,
Glad that u're back! I must agree that I'm a li'l surprised that even IT services cos are looking in this direction - this itself realizes the gravity of SN and Web 2.0, which with every passing day is increasing.
All I can say here is that its great you're working closely in something like this. :D