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What Will Google's OpenSocial Mean for Nonprofits?

What Will Google's OpenSocial Mean for Nonprofits?

Tomorrow Google will launch OpenSocial.

ZDNet's post, Google's OpenSocial: What it Means explains what it will be:

"[T]he set of APIs allows developers to create applications that work on any social network that joins Google’s open party. So far, besides Google’s Orkut social net, LinkedIn, hi5, XING, Friendster, Plaxo and Ning (see Marc Andreessen’s post) have joined the party.

Oracle and salesforce.com are also supporting Google’s OpenSocial efforts, which indicates that they have plans to add social networking elements to their application platforms."

According to the same ZDNet post, MySpace is also planning to open its platform to developers.

In his post, Why the Vast Majority of Nonprofits Can't Take Advantage of OpenSocial, Allan Benamer of the Non-profit Tech Blog writes:

"[Y]our average nonprofit will not be able to take advantage of this development in a meaningful way. There’s no doubt that a few will be able to do so but that’s because they’ve already adopted the infrastructure and skill sets that would allow for rapid adoption for new technology. As I outlined in a couple of earlier posts, if you’re not even state-of-2005 in your application development practices, don’t bother with OpenSocial. Basically, your IT architecture needs to be able to handle hundreds and then eventually thousands of requests per minute and you need to do some seriously rapid application development. If you’re not using EC2 or a web framework like Django or Ruby on Rails or even an agile methodology, forget about it. You’re toast. However, I suspect only ventures that are VC-backed will be quick enough to do this."

What do you think Google's OpenSocial will mean for nonprofits? Share your thoughts in the comments or post a link to your blog post about the topic.

Image Credit: Telstar Test Launch by Steve Jurvetson

Submitted by Britt Bravo on October 31, 2007 - 12:13pm

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OpenSocial

David Collin

Director of Organizational Learning

American Cancer Society

http://www.fispace.org

Well, after reading the rest of Benamer's post, I'd say the impact is likely to be pretty low. Sounds like you'll need some pretty cutting-edge technologists aboard--not something nonprofits are known for. Sounds like only the top-tier will be able to afford it anytime soon. But perhaps as important as having the technological chops, the nonprofits need to kick up their awareness of the open-everything movement and the pace of competitive change. A big problem for nonprofits--and profits alike--is implementing the cultural and business practices that go with rapid tech change.

Submitted by David Collin on November 1, 2007 - 1:30pm.

Google Social will mean nothing

To illustrate my point, try searching on the phrase "Evil thrives when Google people do nothing". You will discover me complaining about a year long anonymous smear campaign directed at my own social enterprise and hosted on their blogspot medium.

The reason, that we attempted to raise awareness to the plight of disabled Eastern European children in an article entitled " Ukraine: Death Camps for Children". It's about corruption and neglect and those close to the corruption and neglect didn't like it.

Google is into what it does for money, nothing else and if social activism runs contrary to their commercial interests or taking responsibility for what people post on it's blogging medium.

This is the crap one has to put up with in social activism, sometimes it gets dangerous and involves people with guns. it' s a lot more than Web2.0 and embedding a new widget.

Submitted by Jeff Mowatt on November 1, 2007 - 2:27am.