Google's OpenSocial looks more like hype tha...

Jack Schofield
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Google's OpenSocial looks more like hype than substance
The blogosphere seems to have gone mad for Google's latest gadget wheeze, but it's still unproven, non-standard technology
November 4, 2007 8:50 PM
Having been on holiday, I missed the excitement over Google'sOpenSocial, bloggedbelow, but at least I'm in time to observe the inevitable backlash. Having read the news reports, three things are moderately suprising.
First, as far as I can see, it's just a widget format, ie Google Gadgets. I'm sure there is value to having a common Google-sponsored widget format for mini-applications, because it reduces the amount of work needed to put Vampires or whatever on different social networking sites. But really, who cares?
Second, I can't see what's open about it. Sure anybody can write apps for it, but anybody can write apps for Facebook, or, indeed, Windows. There's more to come, but at the moment, it looks just as proprietary as the Facebook system it more-or-less copies. The main difference being that Google appears to own and control the OpenSocial container/API in which the widgets run. But should it feel the need, Facebook can make its system just as "open" as Google's, simply by allowing other sites to host Facebook apps.
Russell Beattie has had a whinge about openness inWhere the hell is the Container API?
Would people be jumping on this bandwagon so readily if it was Microsoft unilaterally coming up with an API, holding secret meetings geared towards undercutting the market leader, and then making sure that only those anointed partners get a head start on launch day by making sure a key part of the API isn't released -- even in alpha. (It obviously exists already, all the partners have that spec and even sample code, I'm sure. The rest of us don't get access yet, until the GOOG says otherwise).
 
Christ, if this was a Microsoft move, there'd be torches and pitchforks out. I honestly don't see why Google gets a free pass here.
Third, if there's a need to transfer personal data between social networking sites, there's a much simpler and easier way to do than OpenSocial. Amicroformat like a suitably-expandedhCard would do the job perfectly well in an industry standard way, similar to the vCard standard, RFC 2426. (Marshall Kirkpatrick at Read/Write Web makes the same point inOpenSocial: Three Big Concerns.) But I've tried talking to Google about microformats before, and it appears to be one of their blind spots (to their cost: Gdata has been a huge flop). You don't actually need OpenSocial to transfer or share your personal data, and from reading Dare Obasanjo, OpenSocial looks worse. As for transferring relationship data, who gave you the right?
Dare Obasanjo aka Carnage4Life has postedOpenSocial: Technical Overview and Critique exploring some of the technical problems, though he concludes: "Despite these misgivings, I think this is a step in the right direction. Web widget and social graph APIs need to be standardized across the Web." Fair enough.
I can also understand the enthusiasm of people likeMarc Andreesson (of Ning), because it puts all the non-Facebook social networks on a level playing field, from the widget hosting point of view:
With the Facebook platform, only Facebook itself can be a "container" -- "apps" can only run within Facebook itself. In contrast, with Open Social, any social network can be an Open Social container and allow Open Social apps to run within it.
Yes, that's good for developers, but it still doesn't mean anything until people start to decide on their social network according to which widgets it will run. At the moment, they don't care. When they do care, there's nothing to stop Facebook from adding OpenSocial/Gogle Gadgets as well. Which will take seconds.
Over the long term, there are good reasons for thinking -- and for hoping -- that a good open system will beat a good closed system, like Facebook. So far, however, OpenSocial has yet to show that it's either good or open. The idea that it signals the death of Facebook in the foreseeable future is just stupid.
Update: The conversation is moving along. In the comments below, RickWilliams has pointed to a post byTim O'Reilly in response to a post byMarc Cuban: An Open Facebook API vs Google OpenSocial.Don Dodge has responded to both. Don also makes explicit an issue that I merely alluded to above, when I asked: "As for transferring relationship data, who gave you the right?" Don says:
OK, what if I am a friend of someone on MySpace. Cool, my name and picture appears on their friends list and anyone can see it. But what if this MySpace friend joins a PornSpace social network site and wants to import his friends list to that site? Now my name and picture shows up on his PornSpace page as a friend of his? Hey, wait a minute, I didn't agree to that.
Final update: Tim O'Reilly has posted more thoughts onOpenSocial: It's the data, stupid. While he's gone from "mild skepticism" to "full blown disappointment" there are some more hopeful comments.