OpenSocial: a media primer

Not since the terms widget, rss and web 2.0 has a term be bandied about with quite such enthusiasm as OpenSocial. In some ways this is no bad thing, enthusiasm and excitement from technologists continues to find it's way to the boardrooms.

However, where you find enthusiasm you often find confusion and inconsistency. There unquestionably a lack of understanding as to what OpenSocial actually is, what it can do for media companies today and what it could do in the future.

In part the confusion highlights Google's own shortcomings in explanation and presentation. OpenSocial is primarily a tool for developers but when one of the world's largest, most powerful and influential companies announces it's teaming up with other large high profile companies (e.g. MySpace), it will attract attention from anyone thinking about the future of media.

Different products but to labour the point see how Apple announces a product:

and compare it with the Google effort:

You can see Google haven't really attempted to explain what OpenSocial means for users. Here's my unofficial quick-fire interpretation for those more interested in AIs than APIs:

What is Open Social:

• Google's OpenSocial is attempting to become the de facto platform / standard for developers building widgets and web applications.
• Facebook’s dynamic growth can partly be attributed to opening its social graph to developers. A steadily growth in applications that are easy to use and often don't require re-entry of profile data have increased repeat visits and session times.
• Websites currently supporting OpenSocial, include Engage.com, Friendster, hi5, Hyves, imeem, LinkedIn, MySpace, Ning, Oracle, orkut, Plaxo, Salesforce.com, Six Apart, Tianji, Viadeo, and XING.
• Although free to do so, Facebook have decided not to join OpenSocial yet. The graph below shows the total reach of OpenSocial as opposed to Facebook.

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What does this mean for media companies:

• Instead of your development team writing an application for one social network and then rewriting it to make it work on another, applications using the OpenSocial platform will work on any of the partner sites. This makes it quicker, easier and cheaper to reach both larger and broader audiences with your applications.
  
• Open standards create a booms of innovation. As applications reach more users and developers are encouraged to create more and iterate faster on existing ones. If you haven't got a development team working with commissioners now you may loose out to a competitor or start-up. Start work now.
• The current alliance of sites is impressive but not likely to erode the popularity of Facebook or immediately alter the dynamics of the social networking market. It might help revitalize the sites of some of its members, which have seen their social networks eclipsed by the big players.
• Facebook has a lot of wind behind its sails, but OpenSocial should cause your developers to rethink their priorities (see graph above). If you're wanting to reach the mainstream then go for Open Social.
• Whether you choose to develop on OpenSocial or for Facebook must build to cater for your audience - not the site you prefer!

Where might OpenSocial go from here:

• Originally, Google limited information available through three APIs. But in February Google's announced the Social Graph API. This is seen as a major step in the development towards the idea of the internet as an operating system.
• The Social Graph API lowers the barrier to re-use of information that people publish about themselves on the web. Google will increase the level and sophistication of user controls of the data and data flow. I may want to allow flickr to see all my data but I wouldn't want that information visible to the public and search engines.
• Open Social is based on a vision consistent with what Dick Hardt calls user-centric identity.  It uses XFN and FOAF, so that you can mark up information that is about you. This will increase the richness and usefulness of the SocialGraph. The word friend has clearly been diluted to the Nth degree on services like Facebook.
• All public URLs that belong to you and are interconnected. This could be your blog (a1), your LiveJournal page (a2), and your Twitter account (a3).
• The next generation of search and products should declare connections between people as well as betewen documents. For example, a1 may link to b's blog while a1 and c link to each other.
• OpenSocial isn't yet comprehensive enough to give those participating applications fine-grained access to individual profile elements, but you can imagine that that's where it's going... (It would also be great for it to have mechanisms for querying truly private data. The Unix permissions mechanism of "user," "group," and "world" is a good model

What this means for media companies:

• Google's plafform will continue to get more sophisticated and grow. New applications will have to be built to use the latest Open Soicial API from Google. Widgets will be more important, more important in many ways than having a destination in it's own right.
• Your users will no longer have to re-enter personal, profile information data. If' I'm a member of flickr is should automatically know who I am, allow me to connect with friends already on the new service and those whom I'd like to joint. The farcicle  need to re-meet people on the web should fall away.
• OpenSocial will understand that you don't simply have friends but a complex web of relationships with others. It will know who you work with, who you watch the football with, who you love and who your family is.
• OpenSocial will allow your users to loosely connect the fragments of their digital lives in a way that ensures trust and reliability.

Summary:

• Widgets that can reach multiple audiences are easier and cheaper to build
• Widgets will increase importance and there is likely to be rapid innovation in this space
• Facebook's not down with OpenSocial which makes them the smaller network in terms of size
• OpenSocial as a platform will develop and information will be set free
• OpenSocial could reduce app fatigue as double keying of information should become a thing of the past.
• The complexities and permissions around data sharing haven't be thought through yet
• May solve some of the architectural problems like identity and distributed reputations
• The web could become linked in deeper and more meaningful ways than ever before
• The hyperlink may in time cease to be the most important currency on the web

Comments

[Reese]

Thanks! Has anyone heard anything about rapidshare search engines( http://www.rapidsharemix.com )?