Saturday, November 10, 2007

News 10 - OpenSocial

1. In class, I learned that social networking sites contain applications such as games and virtual libraries. I also learned that Google is trying to get social networking websites together to use a common platform for developing these applications. I was wondering what kind of advantages and disadvantages this would have.

2. Related article: http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/10/30/details-revealed-google-opensocial-to-be-common-apis-for-building-social-apps/

3. The article is about Google's launch of a standardized platform for developing applications for social networking websites, called OpenSocial. It features many participants, called hosts, that feature user data and content. Developers then use this standard to create software for the social networking sites. To my surprise, many hosts, such as MySpace, Friendster, LinkedIn, have already agreed to this. The OpenSocial platform promises to make more varied types of applications compatible with all host social networking site, making distribution easier for developers of software applications. I agree with the author that the success of this new OpenSocial platform would make life easier for software developers. Traditionally different websites use different programming languages, and the developers need to use the same language that the websites use. Now OpenSocial can provide the connection between the developers' application program to the social websites. The developers can use any computer language for thier application, and they will be able to access the data from the social websites through OpenSocial. Therefore, OpenSocial enriches the users of these websites by making more variety of applications available to them.

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