Google to Launch SNS API

Today’s social networks are essentially information silos. They’re contrived connections in closed structures vulnerable to network effects. What would happen, then, if those structures could be bridged? That’s what Google OpenSocial will do Thursday, throwing the weight of all the world’s other social networks against Facebook and MySpace.

OpenSocial is a set of three common APIs, defined by Google with input from partners, that allow developers to access core functions and information at social networks:

* Profile Information (user data)
* Friends Information (social graph)
* Activities (things that happen, News Feed type stuff)

Hosts agree to accept the API calls and return appropriate data. Google won’t try to provide universal API coverage for special use cases, instead focusing on the most common uses. Specialized functions/data can be accessed from the hosts directly via their own APIs.

Unlike Facebook, OpenSocial does not have its own markup language (Facebook requires use of FBML for security reasons, but it also makes code unusable outside of Facebook). Instead, developers use normal javascript and html (and can embed Flash elements). The benefit of the Google approach is that developers can use much of their existing front end code and simply tailor it slightly for OpenSocial, so creating applications is even easier than on Facebook.

Applications can have full functionality on profile and/or canvas pages, subject to the specific rules of each host. Facebook, by contrast, limits most functionality to the canvas page, allowing a widget on the profile page with limited features.

Partners are in two categories: hosts and developers. Hosts are the participating social networks, and include Orkut, Salesforce, LinkedIn, Ning, Hi5, Plaxo, Friendster, Viadeo and Oracle.

Developers include Flixster, iLike, RockYou and Slide.

As usual, Google competes by getting as meta as possible. This is not exactly the approach I expected — I imagined a bot automatically harvesting human connections a la Spock and seamlessly adding them to Google search — but it’s still a smart move that allows Google to add your existing friendships to its database of intentions. Now that MySpace is with News Corp and Facebook is with Microsoft, let’s see if they’ll have the guts to connect.