Google has dealt a sharp blow to the walled garden of Facebook, the current darling of social networking. The new OpenSocial API is a common API that can be used to access data from all social networks that support the OpenSocial standard. A bunch of popular social networkings are jumping onboard: Engage.com, Friendster, hi5, Hyves, imeem, LinkedIn, MySpace, Ning, Oracle, orkut, Plaxo, Salesforce.com, Six Apart, Tianji, Viadeo, and XING.
Initially OpenSocial only addresses the lowest common denominator across social networks: profile, social graph (friends), and activities (what I’m doing, things that are happening). But, wow, this is going to make things very interesting. As Google says, “the web is better when it’s social.”