Should Marketers Care About OpenSocial?

Google says OpenSocial will unleash more powerful and pervasive social capabilities for the web, empowering developers to build far-reaching aplications that users can enjoy regardless of the websites, web applications, or social networks they use.

Why is that a big deal?

Take widgets, for example. They're those mini social applications that are used to extend the online experience of many websites and brands, and they're site-specific. What that means is that developers have to learn the API for a particular social network to make the application work. And with a growing list of social networks that can be time-consuming and costly.

OpenSocial enables developers to "write a widget to a single standard and gain immediate distribution to 200 million homes." OpenSocial also has the potential to boost growth of all social networks," says Forrester analyst Charlene Li, "by moving beyond the typical fun yet frivolous apps like food throwing developed by 20-something developers."

The list of websites implementing OpenSocial includes Engage.com, Friendster, hi5, Hyves, imeem, LinkedIn, MySpace, Ning, Oracle, Orkut, Plaxo, Salesforce.com, Six Apart, Tianji, Viadeo and XING.

Okay, so OpenSocial is a good thing. But there's no need for marketers to jump in with both feet just yet, says Forrester analyst, Jeremiah Owyang. He recommends that companies wanting to extend their online presence should exercise caution because the risks of sharing company and user data among multiple platforms are unknown. Also, many applications may behave differently across networks since user social graphs may vary by network.

And even though OpenSocial is a promising development, Li cautions that it won't solve the problem of "walled gardens," such as Facebook, which requires that all activities that leverage it's users' social graphs have to take place on Facebook itself.