The 1st of November 2007 will probably remain in history also as the day when Google Inc. has released the OpenSocial project. But what is this OpenSocial initiative about which everybody has started to talk, talk and talk? They say this will blow Facebook’s business up and that Google has really launched itself in the most popular race of all races: the social networking race. Furthermore, the fact that MySpace, which is the world’s No. 1 social networking web site, has announced it has joined forces with Google Inc. through this project makes the OpenSocial initiative even more charming. Still, once again, why is Google’s OpenSocial so important? How will this change the world of social networking as we know it today?
So, first of all, one should know that Google’s OpenSocial project represents a set of common APIs, that is application programming interfaces, for web-based social network applications. Although this does not sound very unusual, the novelty that Google Inc. wants to bring is that the OpenSocial APIs will be interoperable with any social network system that supports them. Here comes MySpace, Friendster and others, which will definitely support Google’s OpenSocial’s APIs. This way, OpenSocial will develop a cross-platform that will come against its major rival, Facebook. Google will offer flexibility and independence, while Facebook will offer a theoretically hermetic, protective environment. Guess who will win! OpenSocial, which will allow people to take their friends virtually everywhere on the Web, or Facebook, which will offer its goodies only on its web?
Secondly, Google Inc.’s OpenSocial project will beat Facebook also with the help of developers. This dynamic project and the fact that practically all the other social networking projects have joined the team (just because it represents a team against Facebook, the major enemy of all enemies) will obviously attract the developers to create third-party applications for it. This way, Google and its friends will win also because they will offer the people not only flexibility and independence, but also a greater sack of goodies.
Practically, this seems to be the magic formula with which Google Inc. and its partners want to hook the Internet users. The social networking area is really a gold mine and Google has always known the smell of gold. In just few days since everyone has believed that Facebook will rule the (social networking) world because of its deal with Microsoft, Google has once again proved to be smarter. “Social Will Be Everywhere”!