First look at the OpenSocial API

Author: Dennison Uy

2 Nov

The Open Social API page is now up. It is in its early stages and the APIs have not actually been released yet. However, based on the information available on the site, OpenSocial allows cross-site synchronization of the following data:

Basic User information (name, photo)
Friends list management (!)
Tracking of activity streams for self and friends
Storing and retrieving of user data
“Media items” (audio, image, video)

This is all implemeted in JavaScript, and should be compatible with almost any framework like Prototype or JQuery.

It is also possible to develop containers for OpenSocial. To do this, your site must become a Google gadget container, and it needs to implement the OpenSocial Service Provider Interface. What this all means that any site, including — yes, FaceBook — can indeed become a container

Okay, enough talk. If you’re still having a hard time picturing all of this, simply check out this video taken from Google Campfire One: Introducing Open Social. The good stuff is around 10 minutes into the video demonstrating open social applets starting from the simple Hello World applet.

Here is a comprehensive list of OpenSocial launch partners:

3 Responses for "First look at the OpenSocial API"

godie November 3rd, 2007 at 8:39 pm 1
Ahh Google has stepped in just-in-time.

Orkut didn’t go boom as expected but that was the plan, they already knew about FB long before its API was launched.

Now Google want’s to be the data warehousing for all social sites — scarry thought that Google will know all my preferences. “No more lies, i know you liked color pink from social so we changed your Gmail color scheme too.” waaah.

Anyway I already predicted this 3 years ago when we built the Friendster API using webservices.

Hah, i told them so! Now whose your daddy?!
godie’s last blog post..Explosion in Glorietta 3 Mall in Makati , PH
Dennison Uy - Graphic Designer November 3rd, 2007 at 3:59 am 2
FaceBook is more popular than Friendster in America, while Friendster’s has a loyal following in south east Asia especially in the Philippines where its continued development is being done, just like Orkut is popular in India and Latin America. It’s sort of like Friendster with media sharing and “applets” those user-developed programs that you can plug into your FaceBook account that lets you do things like email people, give them hugs and kisses, play an RPG game, etc.
Neil November 3rd, 2007 at 3:45 am 3
Is this a Friendster or something? Um, kakasignup ko pa lang sa Facebook and I didn’t know it’s that popular pala.

Neil’s last blog post..Pinilakang Tabing - Another fearless attempt on Filmmaking [Updated]