Google OpenSocial announced

So I just read about the announcement of the awaited OpenSocial from Google.There has been so much of talk and hype around Social Networks that people have started throwing around the name and all sorts of sites have come up with their own "flavour" of social networks, pretty much disregarding for most of the time what's really happening. A way for people to connect with others in different spheres of life, extending the interactions that are limited distance and availability.

I'll have to still read more about the service to form some concrete opinions about the service itself but its approach seems bang on!

Here's why:

What's really happening are Three things we've known for ages.

1. Sharing of information makes it more valuable (as long as its not scandalous love letters or something similar - which btw is an important consideration here since i've personally been asked to take a couple of survey where HR people seriously considered the merits of using Facebook to gain more information for recruitment! and for the fact that for e.g. both LinkedIn and OpenSocial - two very different kinds of networks-are going to be a part of it.) So access control and how it is managed is going to be a big usability consideration.

2. Remixing of information makes it more valuable.

There are tons of ways social information can be leveraged with probably professional information. The trick is again in information access control. What kind of mechanisms do we want to put in place for information to be remixed.

3. Repurposing of information makes it more valuable.

This is different from remixing - as the original information may not have been intended as to be used for a purpose which it can now be used for. Think of testimonials in Orkut used as recommendations for linked in.


Strategically it's a pretty decent example of a "New Game" by Google (again!), which is pretty impressive. The lesson to learn here is how Google thinks at a scale where without actually knowing the details about the project, just thinking about the idea you have to saw "Wow!".

For people who for various reasons are on more than two social networks, there was also a very real need and hope that there would be some kind of consolidation where you could see all your friends without being locked up into a service for each set of friends. For example back in India I started on Orkut and most of my friends from there are on Orkut. Most of my friends here in the US are on facebook. So I have to deal with two different services for the same purpose. This consolidation is immensely useful. Again this is a great example of consolidation based on need vs products by Google. Before this we saw it in the integration of Gtalk into Gamil and to some extent Gtalk into YouTube and Orkut too. Basically we used messengers to communite and these are all places where we might communicate with others so it makes sense to integrate them rather than having different applications to do that.

Got to rush for a class but i'll be sure to write up more into this!
Exciting times :)

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