Google, MySpace and Yahoo have given their backing
toOpenSocial, an internet standard
designed to make it easier for users and commercial software
companies to build social networking applications.
OpenSocial promises to bridge the gap between consumer-based
sites and enterprise applications. Its supporters hope it will
provide a way to build applications that enable users to interact
with friends and colleagues working across different
social networking sites.
Gary Barnett, research director at analyst Bathwick, said that
in future, businesses would use social networking to collaborate
with business partners."We are at a stage where technology in
social networking could change the way you work," he said.
Social networks offer corporate IT a way to bring the "old
school tie" effect into a company. They could, for instance, be
used to capture business decisions that take place outside the
office, such as on a golf course or over dinner. They could enable
businesses to find new business services and hire people with the
right skills.
According to Gartner, the availability of application
programming interfaces for social network sites shows they have
evolved in sophistication and are beginning to provide features
that enterprise information systems do not yet address.
Gartner research director Ray Valdes said that although
traditional enterprise software suites for collaboration and social
networking were evolving to add Facebook-like features, they were
evolving more slowly than Facebook and its consumer-based
competitors.
"Even with the full complement of packages for communication and
collaboration, from e-mail to blogs, there are still important
business interactions and relationships that are not captured in
corporate IT systems," said Valdes.
OpenSocial will enable businesses to develop applications for a
wide range of social networking. The technology will be available
on a variety of sites, including LinkedIn, MySpace, Oracle, Plaxo
and Salesforce.co, as well as MySpace, Yahoo and Google.
But its adoption is far from universal. Facebook, for example,
recently introduced its own application programming interface to
enable websites to create applications on Facebook.
And Microsoft has also begun working with rival social
networking sites, collaborating with Facebook, Bebo and LinkedIn.
The websites have agreed to exchange programming interfaces,
allowing users to move their contacts and relationships between the
services more safely and securely.
Facebook's and Microsoft's plans rely on proprietary APIs, which
are restricted to social networking sites that choose to support
the Microsoft or Facebook technology.
By contrast, OpenSocial will be made available under a
Creative Commons
copyright licence which allows free sharing and reuse of the code.
An open-source reference implementation called
Shindig is being
created and developed as a project in the Apache Software
Foundation. So any application built using OpenSocial could
potentially support several compatible social networking sites,
giving businesses wide scope to develop new applications.
Although much of social networking activity has so far been
focused on the rise of consumer-based social networking sites, APIs
like OpenSocial are likely to open up such sites to businesses,
creating powerful new business tools and bringing "golf club"
social networks into the office.