Nov 1
Google announced today their OpenSocial APIs reportedly located at this address http://code.google.com/apis/opensocial. As of this writing, there isn’t anything there yet. But when there is it will be huge?
All joking aside, Google does a lot of great work for open source and does give back to the community. For that, I definitely respect them.
Let’s dig in to the business motivation for your startup using these APIs:
You can write an application once and use it with many social networks - like LinkedIn, hi5, Ning, Friendster and Plaxo.
But the big question is… who cares? I haven’t used Friendster since 2004. Plaxo is great for backing up my contacts, but I dont trust them. Ning is pointless, and LinkedIn always wants you to pay to get any value. The other social networks I couldn’t care about. The only two relevant social networks for my market (the American market) are Facebook and Myspace.
So, google… either you’ve got a trick up your sleeve - like enabling me to host my profile on Topstartup and use your API to feed into to all of these social networks, or you wont make a big impact.
If anyone can do it, google, you can. Why not release something real before setting the PR drones in motion?
Click here to read more nonsense on Google’s OpenSocial
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Posted in Facebook, Open Social Networks, Web 2.0
