OpenSocial
Encyclopedia
OpenSocial is a set of common application programming interface
s (APIs) for web
-based social network applications
, developed by Google
along with MySpace
and a number of other social networks.
It was released November 1, 2007.
Applications implementing the OpenSocial APIs will be interoperable
with any social network system that supports them, including features on sites such as Hi5.com, 99factor.com, MySpace
, orkut
, Netlog
, Sonico.com
, Friendster
, Ning, and Yahoo!
.
and JavaScript
, as well as the Google Gadgets
framework, OpenSocial includes four APIs for social software
applications to access data and core functions on participating social network
s. Each API addresses a different aspect:
The general JavaScript
API:
People and friends: people and relationship information
Activities: publishing and accessing user activity information
Persistence: simple key-value pair data for server-free stateful applications.
.
The initial version of the API that was made public was 0.5, followed by version 0.6 released on December 21, 2007. Version 0.7 was released on February 4, 2008. Version 0.8 was released on May 28, 2008. Version 0.9 was released on April 16, 2009. Version 1.0 was released on March 15, 2010. Version 1.1 was released on November 18, 2010.
Version 2.0 was released on August 18, 2011
, Engage.com, Friendster
, hi5
, Hyves
, imeem
, NetModular, mixi
, MySpace
, Ning
, orkut
, Plaxo
, QuePasa
, phpFox, Six Apart
, Freebar.com; as well as business-oriented networking companies LinkedIn
, Tianji, Salesforce.com
, Viadeo
, Oracle
, and XING
. Plaxo
and Ning
released OpenSocial support within the first day of the launch, with Plaxo adding OpenSocial support to its Pulse feature, and Ning adding basic OpenSocial support ahead of its previously announced release of full support in late 2007 to early 2008.
Developers who had already built applications implementing the APIs upon launch include Flixster
, FotoFlexer, iLike
, Newsgator, RockYou, Slide, Theikos, and VirtualTourist
. Initial OpenSocial support experienced vulnerabilities in security, with a self-described amateur developer demonstrating exploits
of the RockYou gadget on Plaxo, and of Ning social networks using the iLike
gadget. On Mar 25, 2008 Yahoo! also announced it has joined the initiative. Next to that, an extension of the OpenSocial specification is used in Responsive Open Learning Environments (ROLE) to support the assembling of widgets and resources into PLEs while providing responsive functionality.
An open source
project, Shindig
, was launched in December, 2007, to provide a reference implementation
of the OpenSocial standards. It has the support of Google, Ning, and other companies developing OpenSocial-related software. The Myspace OpenSocial parser was released as project Negroni in January, 2011 and provides a C# based implementation of OpenSocial.
, and only with a limited number of gadgets, returning errors for other gadgets. Other networks were still looking into implementing the framework.
As reported by TechCrunch on November 5, 2007, OpenSocial was also quickly cracked. The total time to crack the OpenSocial-based iLike on Ning was just 20 minutes, according to TechCrunch, with the attacker being able to add and remove songs on a user's playlist, and to look into information on their friends.
On December 6, TechCrunch followed up with a report by MediaPops founder Russ Whitman, who said "While we were initially very excited, we have learned the hard way just how limited the release truly is." Russ added that "core functionality components" are missing and that "write once, distribute broadly" was not accurate.
alternative to the Facebook Platform
, a proprietary service of the popular social network service
Facebook
. After launching Facebook Platform in late May 2007, as well as acquiring startup web desktop
company Parakey
in mid-July 2007, the fast-growing Facebook has been widely reported as a challenger to Google in establishing and leveraging a ubiquitous web operating system
. Compared to Facebook, which is ranked second by page views worldwide for the month of September 2007, Google's social network orkut
is ranked sixth for the same month, with more than half its members living in Brazil.
Reports on competition between the two companies increased with Facebook scheduling an announcement of an online advertising
initiative (named Facebook Ads) the day after Google's social networking announcement was originally scheduled (November 6, 2007). The initiative includes ad serving
and targeting programs (named Facebook Social Ads and Facebook Insights, respectively) in competition with Google's market-leading AdSense
and AdWords
programs.
Using OpenSocket, the user can run OpenSocial gadgets within Facebook.
While OpenSocial has seen a decline in popularity among social networks, it is seeing wider adoption in enterprise companies in recent years as a plugable extension mechanism for web products. Several companies such as IBM
, Atlassian
, Jive Software.
Application programming interface
An application programming interface is a source code based specification intended to be used as an interface by software components to communicate with each other...
s (APIs) for web
World Wide Web
The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...
-based social network applications
Social network service
A social networking service is an online service, platform, or site that focuses on building and reflecting of social networks or social relations among people, who, for example, share interests and/or activities. A social network service consists of a representation of each user , his/her social...
, developed by Google
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
along with MySpace
MySpace
Myspace is a social networking service owned by Specific Media LLC and pop star Justin Timberlake. Myspace launched in August 2003 and is headquartered in Beverly Hills, California. In August 2011, Myspace had 33.1 million unique U.S. visitors....
and a number of other social networks.
It was released November 1, 2007.
Applications implementing the OpenSocial APIs will be interoperable
Interoperability
Interoperability is a property referring to the ability of diverse systems and organizations to work together . The term is often used in a technical systems engineering sense, or alternatively in a broad sense, taking into account social, political, and organizational factors that impact system to...
with any social network system that supports them, including features on sites such as Hi5.com, 99factor.com, MySpace
MySpace
Myspace is a social networking service owned by Specific Media LLC and pop star Justin Timberlake. Myspace launched in August 2003 and is headquartered in Beverly Hills, California. In August 2011, Myspace had 33.1 million unique U.S. visitors....
, orkut
Orkut
Orkut is a social networking website that is owned and operated by Google Inc. The service is designed to help users meet new and old friends and maintain existing relationships...
, Netlog
Netlog
Netlog is a Belgian social networking website specifically targeted at the European youth demographic....
, Sonico.com
Sonico.com
Sonico is a free-access social networking website oriented toward a Latin American audience.Users can search and add friends, update their own personal profile, manage their privacy, upload photos and YouTube videos, organize events, challenge other users in 6 multi-player and over 200...
, Friendster
Friendster
Friendster is a social gaming site that is based in Malaysia, KL. The company now operates mainly from the three Asian countries namely in the Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore....
, Ning, and Yahoo!
Yahoo!
Yahoo! Inc. is an American multinational internet corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, United States. The company is perhaps best known for its web portal, search engine , Yahoo! Directory, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo! Answers, advertising, online mapping ,...
.
Structure
Based on HTMLHTML
HyperText Markup Language is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of webpages....
and JavaScript
JavaScript
JavaScript is a prototype-based scripting language that is dynamic, weakly typed and has first-class functions. It is a multi-paradigm language, supporting object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles....
, as well as the Google Gadgets
Google Gadgets
Google Gadgets are dynamic web content that can be embedded on a web page. They can be added to and interact strongly with Google's iGoogle personalized home page and the Google Desktop application, as well as Google Wave...
framework, OpenSocial includes four APIs for social software
Social software
Social software applications include communication tools and interactive tools. Communication tools typically handle the capturing, storing and presentation of communication, usually written but increasingly including audio and video as well. Interactive tools handle mediated interactions between a...
applications to access data and core functions on participating social network
Social network
A social network is a social structure made up of individuals called "nodes", which are tied by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as friendship, kinship, common interest, financial exchange, dislike, sexual relationships, or relationships of beliefs, knowledge or prestige.Social...
s. Each API addresses a different aspect:
The general JavaScript
JavaScript
JavaScript is a prototype-based scripting language that is dynamic, weakly typed and has first-class functions. It is a multi-paradigm language, supporting object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles....
API:
People and friends: people and relationship information
Activities: publishing and accessing user activity information
Persistence: simple key-value pair data for server-free stateful applications.
Development
OpenSocial was rumored to be part of a larger social networking initiative by Google code-named "Maka-Maka", which is defined as meaning "intimate friend with whom one is on terms of receiving and giving freely" in HawaiianHawaiian language
The Hawaiian language is a Polynesian language that takes its name from Hawaii, the largest island in the tropical North Pacific archipelago where it developed. Hawaiian, along with English, is an official language of the state of Hawaii...
.
The initial version of the API that was made public was 0.5, followed by version 0.6 released on December 21, 2007. Version 0.7 was released on February 4, 2008. Version 0.8 was released on May 28, 2008. Version 0.9 was released on April 16, 2009. Version 1.0 was released on March 15, 2010. Version 1.1 was released on November 18, 2010.
Version 2.0 was released on August 18, 2011
Implementation
For launch, partners committed to supporting the OpenSocial APIs included the social network companies BeboBebo
Bebo is a social networking website launched in July 2005. It is currently owned and operated by Criterion Capital Partners after taking over from AOL in June 2010....
, Engage.com, Friendster
Friendster
Friendster is a social gaming site that is based in Malaysia, KL. The company now operates mainly from the three Asian countries namely in the Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore....
, hi5
Hi5 (website)
hi5 is a social networking website based in San Francisco, California. The company was founded in 2003 by Ramu Yalamanchi. By 2008, comScore reported that hi5 had become the third most popular social networking site in terms of monthly unique visitors....
, Hyves
Hyves
Hyves is a social networking site in the Netherlands with mainly Dutch visitors and members and competes in this country with sites such as Facebook and MySpace. Hyves was founded in 2004 by Raymond Spanjar, Koen Kam, and Floris Rost van Tonningen....
, imeem
Imeem
The online service imeem was a social media web site where users interacted with each other by streaming, uploading and sharing music and music videos...
, NetModular, mixi
Mixi
mixi, Inc. is one of several social networking websites in Japan, founded in 2004. As of May 2008, mixi had over 21.6 million users and an 80% share of the social networking market in Japan...
, MySpace
MySpace
Myspace is a social networking service owned by Specific Media LLC and pop star Justin Timberlake. Myspace launched in August 2003 and is headquartered in Beverly Hills, California. In August 2011, Myspace had 33.1 million unique U.S. visitors....
, Ning
Ning
Ning is an online platform for people and organizations to create custom social networks, launched in October 2005. Ning offers customers the ability to create a community website with a customized appearance and feel, feature sets such as photos, videos, forums and blogs, and the service layers in...
, orkut
Orkut
Orkut is a social networking website that is owned and operated by Google Inc. The service is designed to help users meet new and old friends and maintain existing relationships...
, Plaxo
Plaxo
Plaxo is an online address book and social networking service originally founded by Sean Parker, Minh Nguyen and two Stanford engineering students, Todd Masonis and Cameron Ring...
, QuePasa
Quepasa
Quepasa Corporation is a US-based social media technology company catering to Latin Audiences worldwide. Quepasa owns and operates Quepasa.com, a social network, Quepasa Games , a social game development studio, and Quepasa Contests, a social media advertising solution -About:Headquartered in West...
, phpFox, Six Apart
Six Apart
Six Apart Ltd., sometimes abbreviated 6A, is a software company known for creating the Movable Type blogware, TypePad blog hosting service, and Vox. The company also is the former owner of LiveJournal. Six Apart is headquartered in Tokyo and is planning to open a new, U.S.-based office in New York...
, Freebar.com; as well as business-oriented networking companies LinkedIn
LinkedIn
LinkedIn is a business-related social networking site. Founded in December 2002 and launched in May 2003, it is mainly used for professional networking. , LinkedIn reports more than 120 million registered users in more than 200 countries and territories. The site is available in English, French,...
, Tianji, Salesforce.com
Salesforce.com
Salesforce.com is an enterprise cloud computing company headquartered in San Francisco that distributes business software on a subscription basis. Salesforce.com hosts the applications off-site...
, Viadeo
Viadeo
Viadeo is a Web 2.0 professional social network with over 35 million members worldwide in 2010, and a membership base that was growing by more than one million per month in 2009. Members include business owners, entrepreneurs and managers from a diverse range of enterprises...
, Oracle
Oracle Corporation
Oracle Corporation is an American multinational computer technology corporation that specializes in developing and marketing hardware systems and enterprise software products – particularly database management systems...
, and XING
Xing
Xing may refer to:* an abbreviation for crossing, primarily used in North America* Qiao Xing Universal Telephone Inc. * XING, a social network platform* Xing County, in Shanxi, China* Xing - A Korean boyband...
. Plaxo
Plaxo
Plaxo is an online address book and social networking service originally founded by Sean Parker, Minh Nguyen and two Stanford engineering students, Todd Masonis and Cameron Ring...
and Ning
Ning
Ning is an online platform for people and organizations to create custom social networks, launched in October 2005. Ning offers customers the ability to create a community website with a customized appearance and feel, feature sets such as photos, videos, forums and blogs, and the service layers in...
released OpenSocial support within the first day of the launch, with Plaxo adding OpenSocial support to its Pulse feature, and Ning adding basic OpenSocial support ahead of its previously announced release of full support in late 2007 to early 2008.
Developers who had already built applications implementing the APIs upon launch include Flixster
Flixster
Flixster is a social movie site allowing users to share movie ratings, discover new movies, learn about movies, and meet others with similar taste in movies. The site allows users to view movie trailers as well as learn about the new and upcoming movies in the box office. The site is based in San...
, FotoFlexer, iLike
ILike
iLike is an online service that allows users to download and share music. The website makes use of a sidebar that is used with Apple's iTunes or Microsoft's Windows Media Player. The program and sidebar are not required in order to use the site but allow for ease in discovering new artists....
, Newsgator, RockYou, Slide, Theikos, and VirtualTourist
Virtualtourist
VirtualTourist is a free, travel-oriented community website featuring user-contributed travel guides for locations worldwide. VirtualTourist is one of a number of travel websites on the Web, which include websites like Tripadvisor and Cruise Critic...
. Initial OpenSocial support experienced vulnerabilities in security, with a self-described amateur developer demonstrating exploits
Exploit (computer security)
An exploit is a piece of software, a chunk of data, or sequence of commands that takes advantage of a bug, glitch or vulnerability in order to cause unintended or unanticipated behavior to occur on computer software, hardware, or something electronic...
of the RockYou gadget on Plaxo, and of Ning social networks using the iLike
ILike
iLike is an online service that allows users to download and share music. The website makes use of a sidebar that is used with Apple's iTunes or Microsoft's Windows Media Player. The program and sidebar are not required in order to use the site but allow for ease in discovering new artists....
gadget. On Mar 25, 2008 Yahoo! also announced it has joined the initiative. Next to that, an extension of the OpenSocial specification is used in Responsive Open Learning Environments (ROLE) to support the assembling of widgets and resources into PLEs while providing responsive functionality.
An open source
Open source
The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...
project, Shindig
Shindig (software)
Shindig is an open source project which began in December 2007 to provide a reference implementation for the OpenSocial standard. The software contains both server-side and client-side code...
, was launched in December, 2007, to provide a reference implementation
Reference implementation
In the software development process, a reference implementation is the standard from which all other implementations, with their attendant customizations, are measured, and to which all improvements are added...
of the OpenSocial standards. It has the support of Google, Ning, and other companies developing OpenSocial-related software. The Myspace OpenSocial parser was released as project Negroni in January, 2011 and provides a C# based implementation of OpenSocial.
Criticism
Opened to much fanfare in news coverage, OpenSocial did not work well in the beginning; it only ran on Google-owned OrkutOrkut
Orkut is a social networking website that is owned and operated by Google Inc. The service is designed to help users meet new and old friends and maintain existing relationships...
, and only with a limited number of gadgets, returning errors for other gadgets. Other networks were still looking into implementing the framework.
As reported by TechCrunch on November 5, 2007, OpenSocial was also quickly cracked. The total time to crack the OpenSocial-based iLike on Ning was just 20 minutes, according to TechCrunch, with the attacker being able to add and remove songs on a user's playlist, and to look into information on their friends.
On December 6, TechCrunch followed up with a report by MediaPops founder Russ Whitman, who said "While we were initially very excited, we have learned the hard way just how limited the release truly is." Russ added that "core functionality components" are missing and that "write once, distribute broadly" was not accurate.
Background
OpenSocial is commonly described as a more open cross-platformCross-platform
In computing, cross-platform, or multi-platform, is an attribute conferred to computer software or computing methods and concepts that are implemented and inter-operate on multiple computer platforms...
alternative to the Facebook Platform
Facebook Platform
The Facebook Platform provides a set of APIs and tools which enable third-party developers to integrate with the "open graph" — whether through applications on Facebook.com or external websites and devices...
, a proprietary service of the popular social network service
Social network service
A social networking service is an online service, platform, or site that focuses on building and reflecting of social networks or social relations among people, who, for example, share interests and/or activities. A social network service consists of a representation of each user , his/her social...
Facebook
Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. , Facebook has more than 800 million active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as...
. After launching Facebook Platform in late May 2007, as well as acquiring startup web desktop
Web desktop
A web desktop or webtop is a desktop environment embedded in a web browser or similar client application. A webtop integrates web applications, web services, client–server applications, application servers, and applications on the local client into a desktop environment using the desktop metaphor...
company Parakey
Parakey
Parakey is a Web-based computer user interface proposed by Firefox contributors Blake Ross and Joe Hewitt. Ross describes it as "a Web operating system that can do everything an OS can do." The idea behind it is to make image, video, and writing transfer to the web easier...
in mid-July 2007, the fast-growing Facebook has been widely reported as a challenger to Google in establishing and leveraging a ubiquitous web operating system
Web operating system
In metacomputing, WebOS and Web operating system are terms that describe network services for Internet scale distributed computing, as in the WebOS Project at UC Berkeley, and the WOS Project...
. Compared to Facebook, which is ranked second by page views worldwide for the month of September 2007, Google's social network orkut
Orkut
Orkut is a social networking website that is owned and operated by Google Inc. The service is designed to help users meet new and old friends and maintain existing relationships...
is ranked sixth for the same month, with more than half its members living in Brazil.
Reports on competition between the two companies increased with Facebook scheduling an announcement of an online advertising
Online advertising
Online advertising is a form of promotion that uses the Internet and World Wide Web to deliver marketing messages to attract customers. Examples of online advertising include contextual ads on search engine results pages, banner ads, blogs, Rich Media Ads, Social network advertising, interstitial...
initiative (named Facebook Ads) the day after Google's social networking announcement was originally scheduled (November 6, 2007). The initiative includes ad serving
Ad serving
Ad serving describes the technology and service that places advertisements on web sites. Ad serving technology companies provide software to web sites and advertisers to serve ads, count them, choose the ads that will make the website or advertiser most money, and monitor progress of different...
and targeting programs (named Facebook Social Ads and Facebook Insights, respectively) in competition with Google's market-leading AdSense
AdSense
Google AdSense which is a program run by Google Inc. allows publishers in the Google Network of content sites to automatically serve text, image, video, and rich media adverts that are targeted to site content and audience. These adverts are administered, sorted, and maintained by Google, and they...
and AdWords
AdWords
Google AdWords is Google's main advertising product and main source of revenue. Google's total advertising revenues were USD$28 billion in 2010. AdWords offers pay-per-click advertising, cost-per-thousand advertising, and site-targeted advertising for text, banner, and rich-media ads. The AdWords...
programs.
Using OpenSocket, the user can run OpenSocial gadgets within Facebook.
While OpenSocial has seen a decline in popularity among social networks, it is seeing wider adoption in enterprise companies in recent years as a plugable extension mechanism for web products. Several companies such as IBM
, Atlassian
, Jive Software.
External links
- Official site of the OpenSocial foundation
- OpenSocial resources at Google
- OpenSocial-Foundation-Proposal
- OpenSocial-Candidates as nominated for Directors
- Open Social App Directory
- Shindig Shindig is an open source implementation of the OpenSocial specification and gadgets specification.