With the first OpenSocial exploits already being published, I thought I better dived in. I read through Dare's helpful technical overview and critique of the API, which saved me the trouble of going through the documentation just to find out what you get (and don't get) with OpenSocial. He's even followed it up with a 5 -sentence summary, go to the link.
From the main article, he points out what most people seem to miss out, that Google's JavaScript API is not as open as its name suggests.
Google has announced a technology platform that is every bit as proprietary as Facebook's. The only difference is that they've cut deals with some companies to utilize their proprietary platform while Facebook's platform is only for use on the Facebook site.
Despite the ability to use OpenSocial on many social sites, which is as open as this version of the API gets, it doesn't take us any closer to a truly portable friends list. To be fair, maybe this was never a goal, though this would probably be the one thing that everyone expects from OpenSocial.
Besides this, Dare offers 3 reasons why he prefers Facebook's platform over OpenSocial:
- There is no alternative to the deep integration into the Web site's user experience that is facilitated with FBML.
- I prefer idiomatic XML to tunnelling data through Atom feeds in ways that [in my opinion] add unnecessary cruft.
- The Facebook APIs encourage developers to build social and item relationship graphs within their application while the OpenSocial seems only concerned with developers stuffing data in key/value pairs.
More reactions to OpenSocial in Facebook's dev forums. With all the noise on the web, I wonder where Google will take the API next.
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