Google’s latest disruptive move, the OpenSocial API, which they are being careful to couch as not being GoogleSocial and instead an open move for the good of users sort of launched last night. It was like attending a fireworks celebration and seeing gigantic rockets in the distance, but a few people coming out in front of a poorly lit campfire holding sparklers saying, “this is all for now.”

Facebook is claiming they weren’t briefed on OpenSocial, says Techcrunch, and yet there were a couple Facebook developers in attendance at last night’s campfire, go figure.

The developer view
I was excited, and still am about OpenSocial but was disappointed this morning to read first thing from the API documentation: “All of the details are subject to change, but this preview should give you a general idea of what the API will be like.”

The SDK is still not available.

I was under the impression — wrong it seems — that this was what was launching last night. What actually launched was the document and a 57 minute video showing what companies are involved with OpenSocial and a few demos of how it works. If it’s working now behind the scenes why not release the SDK?

There will be three main data APIs: People, Activities and Persistence. The last one generates the most questions. It’s a neat idea for me to be able to save user activity at our sites using the Persistence data API, but unless my initial review of the docs is flawed, this still has Google directly involved, managing the Persistence layer, yes/no? Or will it be the provider, meaning we can save this data on other people’s servers?

our site’s user activity (OpenSocial enabled) -> persistance layer -> receiving site

Currently it appears the only sandbox environment for OpenSocial is Orkut, with Ning maybe launching a sandbox tonight. If we can send information to be saved on other servers that will help with the traditional data bottlenecks and scaling, but could present some interesting security challenges. I’m very curious how this part will work and need to study some real world examples.

As you might tell from my admittedly jumbled thoughts, I’m still trying to piece this together. I wish the SDK was available now so I could point out specific code. There are examples in the API documentation but I’m reluctant to quote something Google admits can — and probably will — be changing. Guess I need to play around with the Orkut sandbox.

The non-developer perspective
And now for those of you reading who aren’t developers: should you care about OpenSocial? Short answer: wait and see which sites become OpenSocial enabled that you care about.

In theory OpenSocial should make it easier for developers to produce widgets to run inside other sites without additional code. This should make aggregating activity for services like Friendfeed easier to deploy, which means you might have more Facebook-like widgets to insert into other OpenSocial-enabled websites. For example, let’s say this blog became OpenSocial enabled and each commenter had a Hmm profile you could add these widgets to your profile page or perhaps take your comment activity here — if it was made part of an activity stream — elsewhere.

One of the best real world summaries I’ve read so far comes from the Tim Lee at Techdirt:

The fundamental problem facing Orkut, Friendster, LinkedIn and the other social-networking also-rans is that people don’t want to sign onto a dozen different social networking sites to keep up with all their friends. They want to sign up with a single site and see updates for all their friends in one place. As long as each social networking site is a walled garden, only allowing users to connect with other users on the same site, the largest sites will have a huge advantage because people will naturally gravitate to the site most of their friends use.

Someday I believe everybody will have their own home internet address — a virtual home address — just like your physical home address. Those who have their own personal websites that they host on their own domains already do have this home to some degree. Sure, some people will continue to rent which is the web equivalent of spending a lot of time at any third party website over your own (MySpace, Facebook, Live Spaces), but buying a domain and sharing your social network there makes sense. Having thousands of profiles at different sites seems more like a marketing thing than something practical. When these also-rans, as Tim put it in the quote above go offline you could still save the data and activity from these former sites on your own home site. That to me is one of the most powerful parts of OpenSocial for users in the future.

Time isn’t always on our side when it comes to the web
As shared here before, I’m reluctant to spend too much time at third party sites because I’ve seen so many go by the wayside over the years and my time and activity there, unless they offered an export function, went with them. OpenSocial could help change this if our favorite sites become OpenSocial enabled and share our activity streams. This way new connections you make at some third party also ran site can come with you without having to sign up to be your friend again somewhere else.

Powerful, indeed, if that’s how it works.

Or for the cynical types: not enough of the sites we spend time at will care to do the extra work to be OpenSocial enabled and share the activity stream, thus making it a feature that was a big deal for trendy web pooh point oh sites and little else.

We’ll know the answer in a couple years, looking back. Kind of wish I had a time machine on this one to know which one to put effort into. I’m leaning toward opening up activity streams for users across as many of our sites as possible simply because it seems the right thing to do. The most valuable possession for any human being is time and we should seek to never, ever waste that.

Did this post make you go hmm?

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