A First Look at OpenSocial Answering Questions About Google’s Effort at Standardizing Social Network Widgets, and the Creation of Your First OpenSocial Widget

Andrew Embler Director of Technology Concrete Websites
Table of Contents

• Background
• Questions About OpenSocial...Answered
• Building Your First OpenSocial Widget
• Limitations of OpenSocial
• Conclusions

On November 2nd, Google announced its OpenSocial initiative. Amidst the breathless hyperbole there came a prevailing sense of confusion from the world's web developers (including those around our office). What exactly was this "OpenSocial?" Was it an API? A framework for building web applications? A social network? Was Google invading the Facebook space? All of the above? And - perhaps most importantly - just what the heck are we supposed to learn, exactly?

It turns out that OpenSocial is all of those, and a bit more. It's also a bit loosely defined, and complete documentation is still a bit scarce. So I'm going to try and fill this understanding gap.

While some good write-ups of OpenSocial have been circulating the web since the announcement (Marc Andreesen's is particularly fine) none of them really offer a full picture of the OpenSocial initiative, including how it extends current concepts of widgets and the social web. Moreover, none of them really speak to engaged, active web developers about how to "get on track" with it. If you happen to be one of those developers - smart, passionate, and perhaps a little bit late to the party - this should get you going, and quick.