Google challenges Facebook
2007-11-03 22:39
New York - Google on Friday launched OpenSocial, a common platform for developers of social websites, in a direct challenge to Facebook and its thousands of software applications.
The internet search leader said it hopes OpenSocial's set of common application programming interfaces (APIs) will revolutionise the internet's social powers.
"The web is fundamentally better when it's social, and we're only just starting to see what's possible when you bring social information into different contexts on the web," said Jeff Huber, senior vice president of engineering, Google.
"There's a lot of innovation that will be spurred simply by creating a standard way for developers to run social applications in more places," he said.
The Mountain View, California-based company announced on Thursday it had teamed up with the social networking site MySpace in the project that represents an audience of about 200 million users globally.
Google said on Friday a total of 18 sites had already committed to supporting OpenSocial, including Oracle, orkut, Bebo and LinkedIn.
OpenSocial marks the first time that multiple social networks have been made accessible under a common API to make development and distribution easier and more efficient for developers, the company said."
"OpenSocial will unleash more powerful and pervasive social capabilities for the web, empowering developers to build far-reaching applications that users can enjoy regardless of the websites, web applications, or social networks they use," it said.
Several developers, including Flixster, FotoFlexer, iLike, RockYou, Slide, Theikos, and VirtualTourist have already built applications that use the OpenSocial APIs, Google said.
The Google launch came after Microsoft and Facebook last week announced they were expanding their advertising alliance and the world's leading software maker said it would buy a 1.6% stake in the social-networking website for $240m.
Google had vied with Microsoft for nearly a year for a tie-up with Facebook, which now claims nearly 50 million active users and by some measurements is among the top 10 websites worldwide.