Food for thought

Since most people (even the cash rich Google) feel the price tag on Facebook is way out of reality the flood of competition has started. Face it Facebook's interface is easily bettered and the cost of developing a 'new' king of the hill would be dramatically cheaper than buying a platform that is slowly drowning in application hell. When the Gods at Google [would that make them a Godgle] come up with a new platform its worth noting if only for the concept & how its going to effect everyone else.

clipped from code.google.com The web is better when it's social The web is more interesting when you can build apps that easily interact with your friends and colleagues. But with the trend towards more social applications also comes a growing list of site-specific APIs that developers must learn. OpenSocial provides a common set of APIs for social applications across multiple websites. With standard JavaScript and HTML, developers can create apps that access a social network's friends and update feeds. Many sites, one API Common APIs mean you have less to learn to build for multiple websites. OpenSocial is currently being developed by Google in conjunction with members of the web community. The ultimate goal is for any social website to be able to implement the APIs and host 3rd party social applications. There are many websites implementing OpenSocial, including Engage.com, Friendster, hi5, Hyves, imeem, LinkedIn, MySpace, Ning, Oracle, orkut, Plaxo, Salesforce.com, Six Apart, Tianji, Viadeo, and XING.