Google Goes OpenSocial to Trump Facebook

Google will officially join the club of social software development platform providers Nov. 1, when it unveils a set of application programming interfaces that will allow programmers to write social applications that will work on LinkedIn, Friendster and other social networking sites.
OpenSocial is designed to help programmers build applications that reach more of the 400 million users of social networks than they would under the original open developer model, Google product manager Joe Kraus told eWEEK Oct. 31.

The Mountain View, Calif., search vendor's initiative is an answer to the launch of Facebook's highly successful developer platform, on top of which 7,000 applications have been built since the social networking site launched it May 24.

Google is going the extra mile by enabling programmers to write applications for multiple social networks under three APIs, which will offer access to a user's profile and their friends, and the ability to let their friends know that activities have taken place.
In this learn-once, write-anywhere scenario, developers can tailor their application to run on any Web site enabled by OpenSocial.

In addition to Google's own Orkut social site, roughly a dozen partners have signed up for OpenSocial, including LinkedIn, hi5.com, iLike, Friendster and Ning. All told, the sites comprise over 100 million users, or roughly double the Facebook user base.

The launch of OpenSocial fans the flames between Google and Facebook, which look like real rivals with each passing day. Google's move comes a week after Microsoft announced that it won an extension as the exclusive ad provider for Facebook, in which the Redmond, Wash., software giant also took a $240 million stake.

Via : eWeek