jodhpuriGuy | Avi Mehta

Google published the initial documents about OpenSocial API yesterday. Wondering what it is? Well look here. OpenSocial has been referred to as (one of) the biggest competitions to Facebook. If you have used facebook, you would have heard of the thousands of applications that are available on facebook. These applications are not developed by FB but by other developers from other companies. The powerful platform and the user reach has been the biggest advantage of facebook. And it was looking like it is going to be difficult for anyone to reach their level anytime soon.

Then came the news about OpenSocial. The fact that more than 200 other web organizations(the participants include myspace, Hi5, flixter etc…) are taking part and going to actively support OpenSocial was interesting. It would lead to several changes in the field of “Social Networking”. One thing I see in near future is the facebook-isation of orkut. We have had the “Updates” feature available on orkut for quite some time. This “Wall” would provide a platform for app developers a medium for communication. You will soon be able to add applications to orkut the same way you do it in facebook.

Now this could very well lead to a direct consequence: Google competing with a lot of products from other companies. For example I saw the “Ask Friends” feature on orkut recently. Although it is not mentioned anywhere that it uses openSocial Api, I would not be surprised if it did use it. The reason why I mentioned it is that, with this feature, Google is directly taking on Yahoo Answers!(which is way ahead at least for now…). This and I believe many more things that are yet to come will probably change the perception of limits of Social Networking…