OpenSocial Delayed Until 2008
December 6, 2007
About a month ago, Google announced the release of OpenSocial, its all-encompassing development platform for numerous social networks. Unfortunately, rumor has it that the platform is in an incomplete state, lacking much core functionality.
Russ Whitman, the founder of recent startup MediaPops, included the following statement about OpenSocial in a message to TechCrunch.
Its clear we are pre-Beta at this point, with Google telling developers they are hoping to launch 1.0 early next year. Any company hoping to leverage Open Social as a means to grow its user base similarly to the Facebook growth model will need to wait at least until February to get started, if its ready then. In the end my hope is that Open Social becomes more than just hype to compete with Facebook.
Last Friday, Arne Roomann-Kurrik of Google acknowledged that OpenSocial requires much work in a Google Groups topic entitled “What’s up with OpenSocial?” As the topic covers issues regarding security, privacy, navigation, profile standardization, launch timing, API specifications, and the lack of an application directory, it seems that it is raising eyebrows despite its intention to ease developer concerns. Roomann-Kurrik also provides the following statement, pushing Google’s launch of OpenSocial into January 2008.
At this point it looks like we’ll make a couple more revisions to the API before it’s baked enough for ‘launch’. This puts us into January before the API is ready to be implemented by containers, so expect some early adopters to have a public launch early 2008.
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