The intertubes are a buzzing with lots of new information about Google’s new OpenSocial API standard and I just got done listening to an interesting podcast about it and thought I’d share my views and kind of summarize what I think it all means. Nothing really solid has been released as far as HOW it all works, but I’ll try to say what I think is going to happen with this new set of API’s and anyone who has more information or who would like to chime in and disagree with me is more than welcome in the comments.

Let’s start out with what OpenSocial is. When I first started hearing about how Google was going to out-open Facebook and release a new social network platform, I started thinking it would be something LIKE the facebook platform. This doesn’t seem to be the case. Google will not be involved in your application. OpenSocial is a new web standard that Google is simply spearheading to get this standard out there and used. So instead of Facebook, which requires most of your requests to be sent through facebook, you just have a set of standard API’s that any OpenSocial enabled site must adhere to. For instance, say I wanted to make my blog OpenSocial enabled. I would have to make sure that my blog responded to certain API calls with certain information. Details on how this is done are still pretty sparse, but I’m sure a LOT of new information will hit really soon. Google’s OpenSocial API page still isn’t up yet but when it is, there is certain to be loads of information there.

Now that I have my blog as OpenSocial enabled (this is actually a pretty bad example since the only social aspect of my blog is the comments, but whatever, let’s roll with it and pretend like I had a user registration page), I can go ahead and add an application I might have seen on another OpenSocial enabled site (like MySpace, which also announced they were 100% supporting OpenSocial and have been working secretly with Google for over a year on it). This application shouldn’t need to be rewritten to work on my site because OpenSocial is based on existing HTML and JavaScript standards so applications should be pretty universal. The only thing the OpenSocial API’s help with is grabbing the social data and mixing it with your applications.

MySpace supporting the OpenSocial standard means that any application developer who writes an application using the OpenSocial standards will immediately have an audience of at some 200 million MySpace accounts. This number will only grow as more social networks support OpenSocial since your application shouldn’t need to be rewritten to work on these new sites.

To say the least, I’m excited to see how this is going to work. There’s a long term plan here, so the big picture might not present itself right this minute, but down the road, we could be witnessing the start of a HUGE step in the right direction as far as open standards and information sharing goes. I really cant wait to get my feet wet when the API is really released. Again, though, this article is mostly MY interpretation of what this all means. I know I’ve been saying that your application shouldn’t need to be rewritten, but I’m sure there will be many cases where you SHOULD write parts of your application just so it styles with the site your integrating into better. I’m no expert and I could be dead wrong on a lot of aspects, but I feel like I got the jist of it and would love to hear any comments on what you think. Fire away!

UPDATE :: JUST after I posted this, the OpenSocial API page went live.. so head there for more information!