Google and social networks

Google’s OpenSocial promises to change the social web. 

One of the things that make the social networking site Facebook popular is the nifty widgets (for instance, iLike and Slide) that it offers users. In fact, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder, recently said that more than 80 such widgets have more than 1 million users each.

But the platform on which these can be developed is specific to Facebook. While that was helping Facebook (the better it got in terms of widgets, the more users came and stayed with it), other social networks (and, perhaps, users) were unhappy that clever little applications couldn’t be ‘ported’ to their own sites.

Google, which runs social web Orkut, has decided to do something about it. The internet giant has launched OpenSocial, a common set of standards, that will allow developers to create widgets for social network websites that decide to adopt it. Friendster, hi5, LinkedIn, Ning, Salesforce.com, and MySpace, the world’s largest social network with 110 million active members, have joined OpenSocial.

Some say that Google’s OpenSocial launch was prompted by Microsoft’s decision to invest in Facebook and also the stagnation in Orkut’s own membership. But eventually, a social network’s popularity (and eventual viability) will depend on what kind of members it attracts and how it makes the virtual real estate meaningful for them. Yet, by helping other social network sites offer Facebook-like widgets, Google— an arch Microsoft rival—may be hoping to weaken the social network’s popularity.