Google has been making waves with two noteworthy announcements.
The first is the announcement of the Open Social api that would allow developers to create a single application that would work across multiple social network.
This is in direct contrast to Facebook applications that are written in FBML (Facebook markup language) and are only designed to work inside Facebook.
Many big names have already announced their plans to adopt the Open Social standard including LinkedIn, NewsGator, Ning, Hi5, Orkut (Google’s own social network), Plaxo, and most notably MySpace, the world’s biggest social network. Google has secretly been in talks with MySpace over the last year. Six Apart, the owners of Moveable Type, TypePad and LiveJournal have also annouced they will adopt Open Social.
Rather than each social network having to develop its own markup language, it appears they have decided to line up with Google in favor of Open Social. If Open Social takes off, Facebook will have to give serious thought to adopting it.
Here is Google’s campfire introduction to open social. It’s an hour long, and feels a bit like an infomercial, so I’m not sure how many of you will want to watch the whole thing, I didn’t.
Introducing Open Social
Yesterday Google had another announcement, and it wasn’t the G-Phone. Instead it was an open SDK for mobile phones called Android. Similar to Open Social, Android is intended as a single open platform that will allow developers to create one application that will run across multiple handsets.
Google bought Android way back in 2005 and has been quietly developing it along with the Open Handset Alliance. So far the list of 34 partners include Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile, Motorola, Samsung, Qualcomm, and Intel. There is no mention yet of Verizon or AT&T.
Here is a short introduction by the Android team.
Introducing Android
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