hi5 Networks Releases 0.8 OpenSocial Standard
by Sam Dean - Sep. 03, 2008Comments (3)- Related Blog Posts
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Social networking site hi5 Networks has just announced its delivery of the OpenSocial 0.8 standard, including a collection of RESTful APIs for building social applications across the web. OpenSocial--a set of common APIs for online social network applications developed by Google and several other social networks--has historically had its roots in JavaScript. The new RESTful APIs from hi5 are targeted to allow developers to choose their own development languages for their applications. Will this get a positive response?
"The social web is a phenomenon we at hi5 clearly embrace and promote," said Akash Garg, CTO of hi5, in a statement. "Open, interoperable standards are essential to fostering the vibrant developer community that is making that vision a reality." The new RESTful APIs in the 0.8 standard are specifically targeted to let developers working with different languages to get and update friend and activity data from hi5, but similar data can also be retrieved from and updated to other OpenSocial platforms.
hi5 has been pinning a lot of its hopes on mobile social applications. In late August, the company launched a global service for mobile device users. The 0.8 standard is partly intended to encourage integration of features such as instant messaging and presence with social networking applications.
The number of options for people who want to develop social applications keeps getting larger. We recently covered Zembly's efforts to allow people to mash up social applications, without the need to build them from the ground up. Zembly is also focused on OpenSocial applications, in addition to iPhone applications and more.
While we'll probably continue to see the number of development options for social apps grow, at a certain point there is likely to be consolidation. OpenSocial has the potential to keep things orderly as that happens.
