Outside the Lines

On November 1, 2007, Google launched OpenSocial, a set of APIs that leverage JavaScript and HTML for creating applications that access friends and update feeds from any compliant social network. Nearly 10 months later, Google is touting the maturation of the OpenSocial specification and growing developer and user adoption.

At this juncture OpenSocial version 0.7 has an addressable market of more than 300 million social network users, including the social networks that have delivered OpenSocial applications or are actively developing them, according to Joe Kraus, Google's director of product management. Friendster, which claims 75 million users including 55 million in Asia, recently unleashed OpenSocial for its developer community. Hi5 has more than 1,800 OpenSocial-compliant applications and 66 million installations, according to platform architect Paul Lindner. Hi5 has nearly 60 million users, with 80 percent outside the U.S., according to ComScore.

Overall, Kraus said that there are more than 4,500 OpenSocial applications and 150 million installs. In comparison, Facebook, which has so far eschewed OpenSocial, has more than 30,000 applications and 700 million installs.

"We expect to reach 500 million OpenSocial users by the end of the quarter. It's also very international, as social networking is a global phenomenon," Kraus said.

The latest version of OpenSocial, 0.8, adds a number of new features that extend beyond its original JavaScript roots. "When we launched OpenSocial JavaScript was the center, but the community wants more choice. We agreed upon a RESTful API that gives access to the social bits and is already implemented in Apache Shindig and deployed by hi5 in beta," Kraus said. The OpenSocial RESTful API specification defines how servers, mobile devices, and desktop computers interact with OpenSocial containers without the need for JavaScript or direct user interaction.

"Hi5 launched with OpenSocial very early--January 1, 2008--and we ended up building the system, which had a lot of undefined pieces," Lindner said. "We had a lot of custom work with the REST endpoint so that applications could contact our server directly. As time went by all participants came up with one-offs, but now we are bringing it all together in the community with common types of solutions for these problems. Standardizing on a single specification will allow application developers to write code once and it will work on all different containers. We are already seeing others build on REST specification. Plaxo, for example, has enabled privacy-enabled exchange of contact info."

In addition, the OpenSocial community is working on compliance tools, such as an application that determines the level of compliance for a container.

The 0.9 version of OpenSocial will add templates and markup, making it easier to develop the user experience dimension for an application. "Templates and markup are now in discussion on public mailing lists, but we believe we are pretty close," Kraus said. Regarding when OpenSocial is deserving of a version 1.0 designation, Kraus said that the "community will make the call."

The community Kraus speaks of is the group of about 350 developers participating in the main discussion around the evolution of the open-source OpenSocial specification and reference implementation. Google obviously has major clout in the evolution of OpenSocial, but Kraus noted that just 10 percent of the major participants are from Google.

To further untether OpenSocial from its origins, Google has also proposed an OpenSocial Foundation, which would be a steward for ensuring the OpenSocial specification stays open and intellectual property and patent non-assertions are handled so that developers feel safe about using the code, Kraus said. An announcement about the OpenSocial Foundation is expected "really soon," Kraus added.

Google clearly has a vested interest in seeing OpenSocial succeed. As Google's Vic Gundotra explained at the November 2007 launch, OpenSocial makes good economic sense. "The more applications, the more usage. More users means more searches. And, more searches means more revenue for Google. The goal is to grow the overall market, not just to increase market share." Having the an open source community behind it will make Google's economic mission much easier.

LOS ANGELES--Speaking at IBM's Business Partner Leadership Conference here, Google CEO Eric Schmidt reiterated his position that social networks are still too closed. "If it's not searchable by Google, it's not open, and open is best for the consumer," he said.

He added that "searchable by Google" means also searchable by other search engines, such as Yahoo. "People should be able to move from place to place, and their data is available everywhere," Schmidt said. "Social networks are a real phenomenon of people living their lives online, and it has has legs. We will have to deal with it as a society."

Google has focused efforts on creating code, such as the open source OpenSocial APIs and the Social Graph API, to make social data more portable and accessible to applications. So far, Facebook is the only major social network that has not endorsed the OpenSocial initiative, which is now managed by an independent organization, the OpenSocial Foundation.

Now that Yahoo has finally and officially signed on to the OpenSocial API bandwagon (see Techmeme), the company that Microsoft might buy has joined with MySpace.com and Google to create the OpenSocial Foundation. Facebook is still missing in action, considering whether joining the OpenSocial Foundation is in the best interests of its membership--or its own platform.

OpenSocial provides a useful piece of functionality, solving a developer problem by allowing applications developed with the APIs to run on different services without modification--write once, play many. A photo-sharing application could tap into the social graphs of Orkut, Bebo, MySpace, Ning, or other services without any code changes.

Google is making Facebook's choice regarding OpenSocial more difficult by granting the OpenSocial code to the nonprofit foundation, which will be "independent of any undue influence by any one party," according to the opensocial.org Web site. In fact, Google is giving up its trademark to "OpenSocial" and its ownership in the Web site in the name of community-driven specifications, according to Joe Kraus, director of product management at Google.

In other words, it's more difficult now to categorize OpenSocial as a Google-inspired approach created in part to break the growing dominance of the Facebook platform.

On another front in the search for data portability, Facebook has signed up to partner with Microsoft on address book portability. Along with LinkedIn, Tagged, Hi5, and Bebo, Facebook is endorsing the Windows Live Contacts API, which allows contact info portability.

For example, Facebook or Bebo users can find friends on Windows Live and vice versa. The API also includes provisions for privacy management. The relationship data is not automatically stored, and must be reestablished with permission from the contact on each interaction.

However, adoption of the Windows Live Contacts API won't let you exchange contact info between Facebook and Bebo or Bebo and Hi5. It's only two-way with Windows Live as a node.

"At this point our agreements are between Microsoft and the individual social networks. We have nothing else to announce at this time," John Richards, director of the Windows Live Platform, said in an email response to my query about going further with the API. At least it's a start at breaking down data portability barriers.

I asked Marc Canter, who has been an evangelist for data portability, about Microsoft's API. Here's his e-mail response:

They're sure saying the right things

and they appear to be putting resources behind it - and putting (in) writing what needs to be said. And exerting leadership I may add. You don't see Google saying those sorts of thing. Apparently Yahoo made some open announcements today - too. Haven't seen them yet.

The MS machine is gearing up to "crush" the competition - only problem is that this time - the competition is Google. And we're (the users) all pawns in this game. Who can be more open is the sort of battle we want fought!

So despite MS's best efforts - the tactics of old will not work.

And we (the people) shouldn't care - as long as they continue to open up - that's a good thing.

I predicted that this would happen. Old agenda gets corrupted with the mesh.

There is only one way to go - once Pandora's box is open = and that's more open.

The only variables that remain are:

- how can small guys benefit from an open environment

- how do the big guys protect their family jewels while starting to monetize openness

Google's OpenSocial APIs may be gaining a major new adherent this week. According to the New York Times, Yahoo is expected to join the group that includes MySpace, Plaxo, Bebo, Hi5, Orkut, LinkedIn, Six Apart, Oracle, salesforce.com and Ning, among others. In fact, Facebook is the only major social networking platform that has not joined the OpenSocial club.

OpenSocial allows applications to tap into the social graph, the network of friends and their feeds, of multiple social networks without code rewrites.

Speaking with CNET News.com's Caroline McCarthy at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival over the weekend, Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he was taking a wait and see approach to OpenSocial.

"Most of the social services that people use aren't going to be built by us. And that's cool. That's a good way to be. And so if Google's building some stuff, it could be completely complementary with us, but it's probably also going to move the ecosystem forward. We just kind of want to watch the direction that things are going in."

Facebook doesn't have a great need to jump on the OpenSocial bandwagon now. To date, Facebook has 200,000 developers and 16,000 applications, and is licensing its developer platform to external networks, such as Bebo. Revamping its platform to support OpenSocial isn't a high priority at this point, but a Facebook versus the rest of the social Web--like Microsoft versus the Apple platform in another era--isn't an appealing outcome. If OpenSocial, which is open sourced, begins attracting hordes of developers and users, Facebook will likely get on the bandwagon rather than become a barrier to entry.

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 OpenSocial APIs are in version .7, after starting at .5, if you can follow the versioning logic. Whatever the case, future iterations will be backward compatible with the .7 spec, Glazer said.

Google has also introduced a Social Graph API, which exposes information about the public connections between people (expressed by XFN and FOAF markup languages) and other publicly declared connections accessible to developers. Glazer said that the Social Graph API is on a slower track than the OpenSocial API. "We are expecting it to be a long, slow ramp," Glazer said.

It's difficult to set user expectations for pervasive social applications because most users have no expectations about where to give control and allow for discovery, Glazer said. The use cases have not been well defined for how social graph data should be used in a way that protects privacy and provides enough granularity and ease of use to satisfy a broad range of users. "We'll just let the savvy developers build on it and see what works," Glazer said.

The barriers to injecting the social graph into the core of the Web aren't technological. OATH, OpenID, OpenSocial APIs, and the Social Graph API can be combined to provide the underlying infrastructure for unleashing the social Web fabric, Glazer said. It's people getting comfortable with the user experience of the social Web, just as they did in a past era with the experience of Caller ID.