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by sullivandanny 5258 days ago
It's possible. I did try to make it clear that the Social Graph API isn't the same as OpenSocial. But since OpenSocial is all about an open API for sharing social data....

Google gave me a statement saying they are separate things, which I added, but it still wasn't clear how this may or may not be impacting OpenSocial. So, I asked again.

It's been two hours now, so if it was a crystal clear answer, I'd have expected to heard. My guess is that they are more interrelated, but as I said, hope to get more clarification.
1 comments
Stratoscope 5258 days ago
Two hours, eh? Maybe they were hoping you would skim through the API docs...

Social Graph API: http://code.google.com/apis/socialgraph/docs/api.html

OpenSocial FAQ: http://code.google.com/apis/opensocial/faq.html

OpenSocial Specs: http://docs.opensocial.org/display/OSD/Specs

Snark aside, OpenSocial is a gadget and container specification built around the Google Gadgets spec. The Social Graph API is a service to let you query information about connections between web pages.

I've written some Google Gadgets (OpenSocial apps) and took a quick look through the Social Graph API spec (a much simpler spec). I sure don't see any connection between them. What's the connection that you see?

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sullivandanny 5258 days ago
I've corrected the story with a new headline and lead. OpenSocial is continuing.

Two hours is an incredibly long time for Google to respond to something like that, where there's story out in error. It's a long time to respond period. I know, because I'm in contact with them all the time. That's typically a sign they don't quite know what to say.

Clearly, that wasn't the case here. I did look at the OpenSocial site, and a few of the pages within it. There did seem to be a possible connection between the two. Despite my initial language that did qualify things, it was still too strong.

Excuses aside, and as Kevin Marks notes elsewhere in comments here, the OpenSocial idea was initially put out there as some type of way that Google would unite the web to help share social information for developers to use -- to pull in profile info, friend info and activities. And it wasn't positioned as just some type of social gadget building tool.

That's what it seems to have devolved into. Just curious from anyone, is Google feeding Google+ information into OpenSocial?

The connection I was seeing was now that Google has its own social network, and its own set of social signals, it seemed less interested in potentially ensuring there was an ecosystem of sharing everyone's social signals out there.

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