XING and OpenSocial

OpenSocial, Google’s API for social networks, has been around the web for quite a while now. Within the last months, the gadget-oriented framework ’socialized’ well and, knowing Google’s and the web’s social networks’ power, will continue do so. XING has been working on the integration of OpenSocial since 2007.

At the moment, we are just a few laps away from launching the platform, driving in 6^th gear all the way. Working with this company, I witness how tremendously fast the wheel is turning. My colleague Karsten Rieke and I recently published an article that will be printed in the Informatik Spektrum, a German-speaking informatics periodical. Our article is one of the first comprehensive academic publications on the subject.

Not to give away too much of the article, but what’s the big fuzz on OpenSocial? Many social networks, such as MySpace or Friendster, also participate. How is that an advantage? The main problem for social networks is that while everything works just well within the system, jumping over its fences or offering third-party functionality within its fences is often impossible.

OpenSocial, now being developed by the OpenSocial Foundation, heralds a new standard defining an API for developing so-called social applications that are interoperable on different social networking sites. The sites with the network software for enabling these applications to be implemented are known as containers. Basically, a social application is nothing more than an XML document containing meta information, HTML and JavaScript: the gadget. AJAX-based requests handle the communication between the gadget and its container. By means of the OpenSocial API, the container grants these applications access to profile and contact data, as well as to any messaging systems or update feeds. This is essential as the ability of those applications to work with your social graph is what makes it useful (and fun).

Container sites like XING are presented with the opportunity to expand on their own existing functionalities with a host of additional third-party applications, without having to relinquish control over their user data in the process. OpenSocial represents a secure infrastructure that enables exclusively authorized parties access to carefully specified parts of the OpenSocial API. Of course, users always retain control over which parties are granted access to personal data.

Another crucial aspect, the internationalization of applications, has also been integrated in the OpenSocial specification. This, and many other aspects about which you can read in the article, will be of great value to you. And also to us, not only as a business network thriving for more customer satisfaction, but also in our engineering team where we feel the constant need for innovation and fast development. Have a look into our current job offerings if you would like to help us keeping pace and shaping the future of social networking.