November 5, 2007 – (HOSTSEARCH.COM) – MySpace and Google, Inc. have partnered to offer OpenSocial, it was announced recently. OpenSocial is a programming model developed by Google that provides a set of APIs for building applications for social network sites. The APIs allow third parties to develop applications that a site’s membership can utilize for their own benefit. The OpenSocial community represents a curious convergence of both social and business orientated sites which includes Friendster, hi5, LinkedIn, Ning, and Salesforce.com.
"Our partnership with Google allows developers to gain massive distribution without unnecessary specialized development for every platform," explained MySpace Chief Executive Officer and co-founder, Mr. Chris DeWolfe. "This is about helping the start-up spend more time building a great product rather than rebuilding it for every social network. We're pleased to collaborate with Google to establish a landmark standard for social applications."
The news comes close on the heels of the Facebook f8 Event earlier this year, where it was announced that more than 65 developers had partnered with the social networking site to built applications for its platform. More than 750 developers and industry leaders were at the event.
An example of the business potential generated by such sites is provided by “Book Reviews”. Facebook and Amazon.com partnered on the Book Reviews application, which lets Facebook users write and display book reviews on their pages. Where books are displayed, other users can purchase them at the click of a button.
The opening up of social networking sites generates enormous business potential for those who wish to create businesses geared towards a guaranteed audience with predictable demographics. This in turn has a number of implications for web hosting. If companies can achieve their corporate ambitions using tools such as MySpace and Facebook, this may make traditional web hosting models less attractive, and ultimately, even redundant. To keep ahead of this fast paced curve, the web hosting industry must adapt and establish how their core competencies can be used to leverage the increasing power and benefit of social networking sites.
Developers interested in can visit http://code.google.com/apis/opensocial for code and information, etc. on how to develop applications for this initiative.
