Editor's Notes

Write One Web Application, Use It on Many Social Networks

Last month Google released OpenSocial -- a set of common APIs for building social applications across the web -- for developers of social applications and for websites that want to add social features. The release of OpenSocial marks the first time that multiple social networks have been made accessible under a common API, and comes several months after popular social network Facebook opened its platform to developers. According to Google's announcement, OpenSocial will unleash more powerful and pervasive social capabilities for the web, empowering developers to build far-reaching applications that users can enjoy regardless of the websites, web applications, or social networks they use. 

The proliferation of different APIs across dozens of social websites is forcing developers to choose which ones to write applications for — and then spend their time writing separately for each. OpenSocial gives developers of social applications a single set of APIs to learn for their applications to run on any OpenSocial-enabled website. By providing these standards-based technologies, OpenSocial is likely to speed innovation and bring more social features to more places across the web. Users get more interesting, engaging, and useful features.

From the announcement: 

"The web is fundamentally better when it's social, and we're only just starting to see what's possible when you bring social information into different contexts on the web, " said Jeff Huber, senior vice president of engineering, Google. "There's a lot of innovation that will be spurred simply by creating a standard way for developers to run social applications in more places. With the input and iteration of the community, we hope OpenSocial will become a standard set of technologies for making the web social."

News

Recent Articles

AJAX - Combining Technologies to Increase Website Interactivity
by Mikhail Tuknov
Since AJAX allows for asynchronous action, loading of new small amounts of data does not interfere with normal page loading. AJAX allows for a more responsive web experience as it allows your web page to exchange small amounts of data with the server as you view the page. [more]

Send Feedback

Elsewhere on the DevStart Network

The DevStart Newsletters

DevStart, Inc. – 64 Orland Square Drive, Orland Park, Illinois, 60462

Sections

Advertisement