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Ask HN: What is the value behind OpenSocial?
After reading through Opensocial's site and documentation, I find myself still confused. Perhaps part of it centers on the fact that I wasn't around when it launched.
Is it a failed attempt at making apps adopt a universal api? And I say failed because Twitter and Facebook aren't part of the movement. Or is it going to be a force to be reckoned with in the future? Also, how does it fit into the Wave's upcoming launch?
- bemmu 17y agoFacebook might be bigger, but I wouldn't call OpenSocial a failure since around a hundred million people are using it. I've been writing an app that is supposed to work both on MySpace and Mixi.jp (~20M users), both use OpenSocial. While theoretically you are supposed to be able to write once and run everywhere, in reality you have to tweak your app to handle differences in feed publishing details, checking call signatures etc. Still it was a lot nicer than having to write the app totally from scratch for each.
- sscheper 17y agoI don't think it's a failure--obviously other countries are using the social networks that are on open social; however, with facebook in hyper-growth in many countries (primarily south-east asia), this distribution may only decrease in the coming year(s). Is there any way to combine open social with Facebook?