Google’s OpenSocial, APIs released for Social Networking platform

From September, 2006 facebook became open for globe. Till October, 2007 it had 42 million active members. It is the fastest growing social networking site on web. In May 2007, Facebook launched the facebook platform. It’s providing framework to developer to develop their own application and use it with facebook. FBML that is FaceBook Markup Language is used for the writing applications for it. Top Friends, Graffiti, iLike applications made facebook more popular.

Then there were rumors of selling out facebook. From Viacom(MTV is Viacom’s brand), Yahoo!, Microsoft and Google was thinking to buy or getting some stake in this growing venture on web.

September 20, 2007; a highly confidential meeting held at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View. This was to discuss the company’s upcoming plans to address the ‘Facebook issue’. In the next month, October 2007, Microsoft acquires 1.6% equity stake in Facebook for $240 millions, also expands ad partnership with facebook.

Meanwhile, Google had already started with their progress in this issue. What was lacking in Orkut?! It’s the applications building platform, which will provide a framework for developers to build an application like facebook. And more on that they didn’t want to limit it for Orkut. They wanted developers to access its APIs and build applications which will work on all social networking sites including facebook.
This platform got released yesterday. Google call it OpenSocial. Social networking sites like Hi5, LinkedIn, Friendster, Plaxo, Ning and software makers like salesforce.com, Oracle are partnering with Google in this project.

The main benefit of OpenSocial is developer need not learn the new language like FBML. They can build application using their exiting JavaScript and HTML skills. OpenSocial APIs are made flexible to embed flash objects too.