networking

Tonight, a small group of entrepreneurs, technologists, executives, bloggers, press, and professional campfire tenders gathered in Mountain View below the official Google tyrannosaurus rex and formally launched Open Social into the world.

As I write this, Google is about half an hour away from officially putting the Open Social spec and code on the Internet for general consumption. At that same time, the video from the launch event should be going live. Keep hitting this currently nonworking link until you get satisfaction! [Correction -- the official site is up at that location! Also, here's the video of the launch … Read more

Social-networking site Bebo, which has made its most significant inroads among young people in the United Kingdom, is set to announce that it has joined Google's OpenSocial project, joining the ranks of MySpace.com, Imeem, LinkedIn, Six Apart, and a laundry list of other participants that seems to encompass any social-networking site that isn't Facebook.

Additionally, Bebo plans to soon release an application programming interface (API) later this year that will "enable Facebook developers to easily bring their applications to the Bebo community," a Bebo representative said Thursday. It's not yet clear what this really … Read more

MySpace and Google have issued a press release that, confirming rumors, announces that the News Corp.-owned social networking site will be part of Google's new OpenSocial developer initiative.

MySpace was not initially announced as a part of OpenSocial, leading many to believe that it was absent from the project despite the fact that it already has a search and advertising contract with Google. In an interview with CNET News.com on Wednesday, Google's director of product management, Joe Kraus, said "We would love MySpace to be a part of it," which technically neither confirmed nor … Read more

As already noted, I'm a big proponent of the SMS text message. So much so that I was willing to pay $.50 a text sent from Australia! But on a more serious note, there was a 5.6 earthquake here in the Bay Area on Tuesday night. I was at dinner and I thought my dinner date was shaking the table or that there was a washing machine somewhere that went awry. But no, it was a bona fide earthquake. While there was no damage and it was minor, we both got text messages from our friends as soon … Read more

Remember, right after Microsoft's $240 million stake in Facebook was announced, when a Forbes blogger reported that two New York hedge funds were also contributing $500 million? And how funny was it that Fake Steve Jobs (also known as Dan Lyons, also on the Forbes payroll) proceeded to post the same news, except that he infused it with hilarious FSJ neologisms like "hedgetard?"

At the time, most people seemed to take it as the truth. After all, the $15 billion valuation for Facebook turned out to be true, so Facebook observers were likely in a state where … Read more

The Silicon Alley Insider's Peter Kafka reported Thursday morning that he heard MySpace will be announcing a partnership with Google's new social-networking project, OpenSocial--potentially before the end of the day.

MySpace, which already has its search and advertising functions powered by Google, has not yet responded to requests for comment.

If true, this would probably be a good thing for MySpace, which has lost its place in the social media spotlight to Facebook (though it still leads in traffic and membership) and is struggling to play catch-up by working on a developer platform strategy that may not see … Read more

When Google announced that its new social-networking initiative would extend to any site that wanted to participate, the land grab for the social Web's attention just got a whole lot more intense.

In a move that was anticipated for weeks, Google has unveiled a set of application program interfaces (APIs) that allow third-party programmers to build widgets that take advantage of personal data and profile connections on a social-networking site. But instead of limiting the project to its own social-networking property, Orkut, Google has invited other sites along for the ride--including LinkedIn, Hi5, Plaxo, Ning, and Friendster.

Read the … Read more

Transition and evolution are a constant in the tech industry as niche products evolve into enterprise infrastructure. This is exactly what's happening with wireless local area networks (WLANs) in large organizations.

It first started awhile back with a few wireless access points in conference rooms. Intel's Centrino processor led to lots more laptops and thus lots more access points. This in turn led to the need for more wireless network management, security, and administrative tools.

All of these things have come to pass and now we are looking at enterprise-wide WLAN deployment, especially in industries such as education, … Read more

My company, Ning, is participating in this week's launch of a new open web API called Open Social, which is being spearheaded by Google and joined by a wide range of partners including Google's own Orkut, LinkedIn, Hi5, Friendster, Salesforce.com, Oracle, iLike, Flixster, RockYou, and Slide.

In a nutshell, Open Social is an open web API that can be supported by two kinds of developers:

* "Containers" -- social networking systems like Ning, Orkut, LinkedIn, Hi5, and Friendster, and...

* "Apps" -- applications that want to be embedded within containers -- for example, the kinds … Read more