Introduction to OpenSocial Apps and Containers

Lane LiaBraaten from Google Developer Programs delivered a presentation introducing OpenSocial. What is OpenSocial? It provides a common open set of API's for building social applications across multiple sites.

Why should you care about Open Social? Who are the stakeholders?

• Developers: being able to reach 200 million users, bringing applications to social networking sites.
• Containers: features
• Users: by allowing 3rd party developers to build apps for social networking sites, creates more participation and involvement on sites.

Monetization is possible and Lane discussed ways that this could be done and cited an examples of how business models could be used, such as Google Adsense, Brand the app, free - freemium, Referrals, Sell virtual or real goods.

Lane talked about the Gartner Technology Hype Cycle (see the slides at http://rurl.org/rjn) for graph illustration) and showed how the OpenSocial model has grown in just six months.

Caja - When things go bad

• Gadgets can be a new vector for phishing, spam, malware

• Social spread of gadgets can spread bad gadgets too

• Caja reduces threats with a JavaScript sanitizer as an additional "sandbox" on top of iFrames protection.

Shindig: What is it?

• Apache Software Foundation project

• Open source reference implementation of OpenSocial + Gadgets stack
• Goal: Launch a new (simple) container in under an hour's worth of work

Lane showed the steps needed with the guidance on the OpenSocial code tutorials on how to create and write your own OpenSocial gadget.

More Resources...

• OpenSocial Tutorial - http://code.google.com/apis/opensocial/articles/tutorial.

• See the slides from the presentation which have lots of useful links to resources for developers.

Hi5

Sameer Siruguri joined the session to introduce the work of hi5. Sameer is a Senior Product Manager at hi5 Networks, Inc. He shared the way that the organization uses ways to connect with different social networks and the ways that developers can use and share together. Sameer showed the Hi5 Developer Center on the network website which can be found at http://www.hi5networks.com/developer.