Google has now splashed into the social networking pond (hmm, ocean really) with its OpenSocial initiative. OpenSocial joins the set of free tools from Google that software developers can use to embed functionality in their web sites. Unlike other Google tools, OpenSocial doesn’t open up things Google like its Maps or News. Instead, the goal is to allow developers to get at social networking information that more and more of us have up on sites like myspace or Linkedin. Using the common Google tools framework (including the Google Gadgets way of life), developers will be able to connect their websites to social networking sites.
I spent some time reading the preliminary documentation for OpenSocial this week for a forthcoming Idealware.org report. The appeal of OpenSocial lies in creating a programming layer that will work the same way on many different social networking sites. For a business or nonprofit developer, you would not have to master the intricacies of each site in order to embed or otherwise mix in an individual’s social networking information with their profile on a site offering general contact relationship management, advocacy or services.
These days, we have been recommending a dual web strategy. Our networked nonprofit seminar series have emphasized using content management systems and new technologies to build web sites that educate, engage, include constituencies. Simultaneously, nonprofits need communication strategies that place them as network leaders and motivators on general social networking sites.
Bridging the two sets of data then becomes the problem. FaceBook and some other sites have opened up programming tools (APIs) to connect data there to other data, and some have begun to take advantage of it. Google OpenSocial goes one step further by dangling the possibility of one set of tools to address many social networking sites, instead of different code for each.
As many have noted, OpenSocial is no panacea. The actual profile information still sits out there in however many sites an individual uses. Unless a web developer was going to make a complete replica of what you can do on myspace plus linkedin, people will still go there to do their real social networking. Also, from a corporate capital point of view, it appears Google released the code right now partly because they lost the bidding to have a piece of the fast growing FaceBook, and FaceBook stands aside from the OpenSocial friends’ list. Our friend Michelle Murrain points out some of these limitations and notes some other useful posts to read about OpenSocial. And most nonprofit web sites are far away from the Web 2.0 infrastructure necessary to directly tie in, as Allan Benamer points out.
So OpenSocial doesn’t create a universal personal profile repository. But it does create an easier way to get at this data. If the Drupal community or CiviCRM communities come up with a module or code samples that connect LinkedIn data with CiviCRM data, that will be quite helpful in itself. And from an culture change point of view, the buzz about OpenSocial, and the appearance of Google Gadgets using it, will speed change in the insularity many nonprofits still operate from about their communications.
