Google's OpenSocial

Or should that be Open Social? - That's what a certain Marc Andreessen (now, where have I heard that name before?) calls it, and he should know:

My company, Ning, is participating in this week's launch of a new open web API called Open Social, which is being spearheaded by Google and joined by a wide range of partners including Google's own Orkut, LinkedIn, Hi5, Friendster, Salesforce.com, Oracle, iLike, Flixster, RockYou, and Slide.

In a nutshell, Open Social is an open web API that can be supported by two kinds of developers:

* "Containers" -- social networking systems like Ning, Orkut, LinkedIn, Hi5, and Friendster, and...

* "Apps" -- applications that want to be embedded within containers -- for example, the kinds of applications built by iLike, Flixster, Rockyou, and Slide.

This is the exact same concept as the Facebook platform, with two huge differences:

* With the Facebook platform, only Facebook itself can be a "container" -- "apps" can only run within Facebook itself. In contrast, with Open Social, any social network can be an Open Social container and allow Open Social apps to run within it.

* With the Facebook platform, app developers build to Facebook-proprietary languages and APIs such as FBML (Facebook Markup Language) and FQL (Facebook Query Language) -- those languages and APIs don't work anywhere other than Facebook -- and then the apps can only run within Facebook. In contrast, with Open Social, app developers can build to standard HTML and Javascript, and their apps can then run in any Open Social container.

What this shows, for the nth time, is that the future history of computing is about the race towards openness, and that the company that opens up the most - as in totally - wins. Google seems to get that, even if there are still a few dark corners of its soul that could do with some sunlight.

In the Battle of the Platforms, Openness Decides

It feels strange to find myself in agreement with Steve Ballmer (eek), but I, too, find all these social networking sites rather faddish. That's not to say they won't settle down into an important role, but the gold-fever mentality (how many zeros is Facebook worth today? I do find it hard to keep up) seems destined for a dotcom-type deflation.

That notwithstanding, this is interesting, and important:

MySpace is gearing up to launch MySpace Platform, according to a number of third party developers who’ve been contacted for input on the product.

...

Suddenly Facebook, with nearly 5,500 third party applications, has significant competition around their platform - Within a month both MySpace and Google ... will probably have launched their own services. Platform competition is great for developers, but it also means they need to create and maintain separate code for each platform they choose to play on.

Well, one factor that will doubtedly affect that decision is the openness of the platform. After all, which would you rather code for: one that locks you in and tells you what to do, or one that doesn't?