opensocial

The first wave of applications built on Google's OpenSocial APIs is set for liftoff in the next few weeks as MySpace, Orkut, and Hi5 make the final push to release their software.

I spoke with David Glazer, director of engineering at Google, at the Graphing Social Patterns conference, who told me that it's "pizza time" for the developers, meaning they are putting in long hours to deliver the apps sooner than later.

The OpenSocial APIs allow developers to create apps that access a social network's friends and update feeds without modification for compliant platforms. The … Read more

MIAMI--When the Future of Web Apps conference wound down Friday night, a few things were clear, not the least of which is the fact that open standards are a big deal.

Google engineer Kevin Marks gave a talk at FOWA about application program interfaces (APIs) and Google's role in the developer community. Marks, a veteran of blog search start-up Technorati, now works on the search giant's OpenSocial initiative, which is working toward a universal standard for social-networking standards and is slated to launch on MySpace.com and Hi5 as well as Google's own Orkut soon. He also … Read more

MIAMI--The way people have been talking about e-mail at the Future of Web Apps conference, you'd think it were a cell phone carrier or a domestic airline. It's antiquated, it's backward, and everybody hates it.

Kevin Marks, a Google engineer and Technorati veteran, said in a talk about the company's OpenSocial project and Social Graph APIs that e-mail is a "strange legacy idea."

"E-mail has died away for a group of users. For the younger generation, they don't use e-mail," he said, talking about the young Web users who have started … Read more

MIAMI--Joseph Smarr, chief systems architect at Plaxo, has become somewhat of an icon of social media's future. An ardent supporter of open standards, Smarr is arguably one of the biggest proponents of Google's OpenSocial who can't officially claim to be a Googler. So it's fitting that Smarr has played a prominent role at the Future of Web Apps conference; CNET News.com had a chance to catch up with him on Thursday and find out some more about what "open" really means and what's next at Plaxo.

Plaxo was the first major social … Read more

Google product manager Amar Gandhi announced in a blog post on Tuesday night that there have been "a couple of modifications" to the company's release of OpenSocial compatibility for its Orkut social network.

In other words, there appears to be some red tape. Instead of immediately rolling out the Orkut platform, which it was originally scheduled to do right around now, Google will be conducting a "prelaunch testing period" for select applications. That will last about four weeks.

"We apologize for delaying the launch a few weeks," Gandhi wrote. "We feel that … Read more

Flux, the social-networking initiative started by media giant Viacom, will officially support Google's OpenSocial standard. The developer site for Flux now says that OpenSocial implementation is "coming soon."

Flux, still in an early phase, was one of the few high-profile social networks that had not yet opted to partake in Google's developer standard. MySpace.com, Bebo, LinkedIn, and just about every other name in social media (except Facebook, which has opted to stick with its own developer platform, at least for now) had announced support for OpenSocial, and several have already invited developers to start hacking away. … Read more

At a party for the new MySpace Developer Platform last night (party pictures; swag bag contents), we got a look at the first apps writer for the new environment. While the platform won't be officially enabled on the public site for a month, according to the new MySpace CTO, Amit Kapur, the apps we got a peek at did look fairly developed already.

In particular, I got a good demo of iLike for MySpace. This music-finding app, which I first saw at the Facebook platform launch, has some features that leverage MySpace's social network quirks.

If you add … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--MySpace's courtship of developers officially started Tuesday evening with a winter beach party, an open bar, and mac and cheese.

When you think about it, it's a cheap date for the amount of money MySpace--and its potential partners--hope to make from the social network's new developer platform, which allows third-party applications like music-sharing service iLike to reach millions of new users. And to survey the crowd here at MySpace's San Francisco offices, where the company launched its new platform and online forums, application developers were already smitten with the idea. The free booze and comfort … Read more

As expected, MySpace has announced that it will launch its developer platform on Tuesday morning.

MySpace, which is owned by News Corp.'s Fox Interactive Media, is one of the most high-profile social media companies to be working with Google's new OpenSocial standard. All applications for the MySpace Developer Platform will be OpenSocial-compatible with MySpace-specific extensions.

Developers will have access to all public profile data (interests, region, friends' list) and will be able to use JavaScript and HTML as well as ActionScript, which powers Flash applications. Most of the HTML widgets that have become so popular on MySpace profiles … Read more