The Hindu : Front Page : Social networks opening up; new non-profit body formed

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Sunday, Apr 27, 2008
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Social networks opening up; new non-profit body formed

Anand Parthasarathy

Google, Yahoo, MySpace create framework for neutral, open platform

Bangalore: The name of the game may be Social Networking — but the way some of the most popular Internet sites go about it might seem downright unsocial.

They invite you to share your photos, personal data, and likes and dislikes. They help you link up with like-minded people. But in fact what they offer is an enclosed space.

If you want to network with friends, you have to make sure all of them are registered at the same site. You might like to participate in multiple groups: one to share your photos; another to link alumni from your school or college; a third to look at each other’s videos. But try to share some common information between these groups — like your basic profile or mugshot. It won’t work. Because these people-centred pages don’t talk to each other. Each is an island and those who offered them had a vested interest in running them that way.

All that may soon change: The Net’s two biggies, Google and Yahoo, joined by one of the giants in social networking, MySpace, have created a new non-profit organisation called OpenSocial, which will release a single, Open standard for such people-centred sites which already attract over 500 million users worldwide.

The OpenSocial Foundation will formally come into being on July 1 this year (see www.opensocial.org). It moots common technology to underpin all such sites... a sort of shared plumbing. It will allow smooth and seamless exchange of content between sites, which might otherwise compete for members. What’s in all this for us? If we create a photo or a profile in one social site, we can export it to other sites where we are registered.

The software to make this possible will be an Open standard, very soon — a small rap on the knuckles of some big sites which seem to run them mainly for all the money they generate.

The OpenSocial community already includes names such as Engage.com, LinkedIn, Plaxo, and of course Orkut, by virtue of its Google ownership.

The initiative has also drawn in some paid services such as SalesForce, which enables small businesses to create their own customer relations solutions.

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