Google and MySpace just announced OpenSocial, a set of common APIs for building social applications across many websites. OpenSocial will be an open source standard maintained by Google, Myspace and other partners including Engage.com, Friendster, hi5, Hyves, imeem, LinkedIn, Ning, Oracle, orkut, Plaxo, Salesforce.com, Six Apart, Tianji, Viadeo, and XING. Of course you don’t see Facebook on the list. To get started Google opened limited Orkut sandbox for developers to start using OpenSocial and create their own gadgets.
Then members will be allowed to install a server-side part of OpenSocial on their servers but this will be another step. Currently there is only the client-part and the documentation to start creating applications for the OpenSocial built upon orkut social network. From the FAQ :
The existence of this single programming model helps both developers and websites. First, developers only have to learn the APIs once in order to build applications that work with any OpenSocial-enabled website. Second, because any website can implement OpenSocial, developers have a broad distribution network to reach users. Websites also benefit by engaging a much larger pool of third party developers than they could without a standard set of APIs.
