p2pnet news | Advertising:- Google has unveiled a set of application program interfaces (APIs) that allow third-party programmers to build widgets that take advantage of personal data and profile connections on a social-networking site, says CNET News.

But, “instead of limiting the project to its own social-networking property, Orkut, Google has invited other sites along for the ride - including LinkedIn, Hi5, Plaxo, Ning, and Friendster,” says the story.

It’s called OpenSocial but where Google is involved, nothing is truly open. Everything it does is designed with one primary goal in mind: to extend and strengthen its own positions.

“Google’s $220 billion empire is based on search - on the unique software it developed to sift through the billions of documents that make up the Web,” says Forbes.

But Google’s vision of the World Wide Web has it sitting squarely in the centre, gently manipulating the millions of strands and strings to its own ultimate advantage.

Meanwhile, only the timid would stop there and, “no one has ever accused Google of being shy,” says the story.

“The company is determined to put its mark on two of the biggest trends in information technology: the rapidly changing world of wireless communication and ’social networking’.”

John Battelle’s Searchblog says three APIs are available now, giving code.google.com/apis/opensocial as the link.

However, at 6:12 PST, “The requested URL /apis/opensocial was not found on this server.”

Meanwhile, is OpenSocial little more than Google going after Facebook?

Says the New York Times:

For Google, the effort could breathe new life into Orkut, which is popular in Brazil and other countries, but not in the United States. While the move could also help some rival social networks, Google could benefit from their success, in part, by helping to sell advertising on those sites.

Indeed, that strategy would fit into a model that Google has begun talking about recently. Vic Gundotra, who heads Google’s developer programs, said last week that Google would soon begin an aggressive project to create software tools and give them away free in an open-source format.

The goal, he said, is to improve not just Google’s applications, but any software that runs on the Web. That, in turn, would drive more Internet use, and Google would benefit indirectly by selling advertising, he said.

Google has not been able to establish itself as a force in social networking, and it clearly wants to. “One of the things to say, very clearly, is that social networks as a phenomenon are very real,” Eric E. Schmidt, Google’s chief executive, said in a recent interview. “If you are of a certain age, you sort of dismiss this as college kids or teenagers. But it is very real.”

Google said it has advertising relationships with several social networks, including a $900 million partnership to sell ads on MySpace, which the company said is performing well. Google is also making some money on Facebook, through ads that run inside applications that are used on that network.

A person familiar with Google’s efforts said that those applications have been far more effective for advertisers on social networks than users’ personal pages. “It is early, but those ads work very well, whereas the ads in overall social media platforms have shown less performance,” the person said. Mr. Kraus said that over time Google hoped to bring other social elements to Web applications, whether or not they run inside social networks. Analysts expect other Google services, including iGoogle, to be equipped with social features eventually.

Stay tuned.

Slashdot it!

Also See:
CNET News - OpenSocial opens new can of worms, October 31, 2007
Forbes - Google’s Growing Grasp, November 1, 2007
Searchblog - Google Launches OpenSocial, October 30, 2007
New York Times - Google and Friends to Gang Up on Facebook, October 31, 2007

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This entry was posted on Thursday, November 1st, 2007 at 7:42 am and is filed under Advertising. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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