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Well, that didn't take long. First it was Barry Klawans taking an "extended break" (which lasted approximately 3 minutes ;-), and now it's Shaun Connolly of JBoss fame getting back into the ring with Bob Bickel and friends at Ringside Networks, the open-source social networking platform.

This isn't surprising, as Shaun worked with the Ringside team at Bluestone and again at JBoss. It was bound to happen....

Ringside Networks on Tuesday plans to announce an open-source server for running social applications on existing Web sites, Facebook, and other social-networking destinations in the future.

The company was founded by Bob Bickel, who helped direct open-source Java company JBoss, and funded by David Skok, a venture capitalist and former board member of JBoss.

The idea is to make it easier to add social application features, like user profiles, friends, and groups, to existing Web sites and to create close interoperability with Facebook, where there are 19,000 third-party applications.

Applications written for Ringside Networks' "social application engine" will run on Facebook. People can also share information with Facebook, such as user log-ins.

In the second quarter, it will be integrated with the OpenSocial specification, which will allow the server to tap into other social networks such as MySpace.com, Orkut, and Bebo, Bickel said Monday.

Once an application is ported from Facebook to Ringside's server, users will be able to update personal information to both places at once or see their friends. A Facebook application could be hosted on another Web site or run as an embedded gadget.

"This is really important because a lot of Web sites have lots of users who have given lots of information about themselves like credit cards and buying histories. What (those Web site owners) want to do is build their own social graph to try to pick up patterns--who is friends with who, who is recommending what to whom," Bickel said.

The company will give away its application server for free under the Lesser General Public License (LGPL) and plans to make money selling analytic tools. A planned commerce server will let developers sell ads for their applications or charge for payments.

Ringside's technology will provide a common set of services, much like Java application servers do for server Java applications, according to Bickel. He said the social application server's services will be authentication, running a single application on multiple Web sites, and federating social graphs to show connections between people.

Bickel, who conceived of the company while making a site for runners, said he tried but found Ning too difficult to add social features to his site and federate data from different sources.

The company plans to release the code for its server on Tuesday at the Open Source Business Conference, which is taking place in San Francisco. A developer who ported a Facebook application for runners, called Runilicious, to Ringside's server plans to launch his application on Tuesday.

(Credit: Ringside Networks)

I guess it was just a matter of time before Bob Bickel, Rich Friedman, and other former JBoss employees started another application server company. Who knew, however, that they'd launch the world's first open-source "social-application server"?

What the heck is that? Well, for one thing, Ringside Networks is certainly an innovative use of open source. For those who think that open source can't compete and innovate new markets, Ringside is about to put that theory to the test.

According to a data sheet the company provided me, to be distributed at Ringside's formal launch at next week's Open Source Business Conference, this is what the product does and is:

Ringside Social Application Server is the first open-source platform that enables Web site owners to build and deploy social applications that operate with existing Web site content and business applications while seamlessly integrating with social networks such as Facebook.

This provides three primary advantages:

... Read more

Veteran tech entrepreneur Bob Bickel has let out a whisper of his new venture, Ringside Networks, which is looking to combine open source with social networking.

Bickel worked at open-source company JBoss, where he was head of business development, and at application server maker Bluestone, which was acquired by Hewlett-Packard.

He said he has assembled a group of people who have worked at those two companies and he's gotten the support of venture capitalist David Skok from Matrix Partners, an investor in JBoss.

In his personal blog on Tuesday, Bickel, a runner and track coach, described his frustration in trying to add social features to a running Web site.

He said Ringside Networks will look to make it easier to make social applications that are outside of the large social networks like Facebook and MySpace.

"The common thread is that these are all social applications, but just a bit different than the 'off the shelf' social applications that you typically see. It is when I began to wish there was something that lets me build and deploy social applications easily. Hmmm, maybe it is a good idea for a company..."

He said the company will providing initial test software in the first quarter of this year.