Open Social Explodes on the Web

Isn’t it amazing how quick things happen on the Internet. It was only last week that OpenSocial was announced and previously leaked, codenamed Maka-Maka, with the original vision of connecting all of Google’s applications through a social network layer, however, since the they’ve launched it, it seems to be a much larger and ambitious than originally intended. It’s virtually an overnight industry changer.

I don’t want to bore you with the same details about what Open Social is, there are tons of resources on the Web already about it, even though it only launched just last week. Just search Technorati or Google it, and you’ll find the usual topics of conversation such as OpenSocial vs Facebook, What is Google’s agenda behind OpenSocial? Is it get Facebook to open up their api after Microsoft beat them to the punch in acquiring a piece of the pie? Is it to give their Orkut Social Network a competitive advantage over the flourishing Facebook? It seems very quickly Facebook went from all everyone could a talk about, they were the hero’s of the social networking scene, and not even a week later they’re the evil outsiders. Does Google want to lead or control the social network industry? All these questions and more being dicussed, and even though some might be baseless and some spot on, it’s all necessary, especially as things are happening soo fast.

I’m sure rafiq will touch on some upcoming OpenSocial news and give us his perspective, but for now I would like to just mention something that came to my mind during all this OpenSocial buzz, and it’s on the topic of potential.

This opens the potential for a company to create a meta-social network? A Web Application that one can use to manage all your social networks. There has been attempts at these before, with I, what I feel as, limited success. OpenSocial has the potential to open this field up for a truly great meta-social network.

PS. Happy Guy Fawkes Day! 🙂