We’ve been following OpenSocial since it launched a little over a week ago. A few days later I posted a brief backgrounder and highlighted some of the neat things happening around OpenSocial.

A week later and it’s no surprise that some smart people are stepping up and jumping in head first — not to say that it’s foolish or risky but it’s still very early and even among the launch members adoption is slow. Regardless, momentum is gaining so I’m going to pluck a few of the more interesting and noteworthy developments:

• Yahoo! Mail and iGoogle are well poised to take on Facebook: both Yahoo and Google run massive web mail services, providing them with something it’s taken Facebook months to build: the social graph — the real-life connections between you and your friends (and something very precious to Facebook’s vitality). As Google and Yahoo make moves to roll social networking functionality into their email tools (where you’re already spending an important chunk of your online time) OpenSocial will certainly help them to catch up in the areas where Facebook still has a significant lead: applications.
• Movable Type Community Solution: SixApart has launched a new version of their Movable Type blogging platform called Movable Type Community Solution. It’s an enterprise tool that brings a lot of Web 1.0 technologies like forums, discussion boards and message boards into the Web2.0 age alongside blogging — taking advantage of new technology, search friendly content, and social networking concepts like credibility gained through recommendations from friends and popularity. SixApart was one of the members announced when OpenSocial launched and supports the API through the use of third-party widgets on the platform.
• OpenSocket puts OpenSocial onto Facebook: This is probably the neatest thing I came across all week. Dan Lester and Ignacio Blanco have created a “wrapper” called OpenSocket that allows developers to run OpenSocial widgets within Facebook! The motivation behind it is pretty cool:
  

  The initial goal is to bring OpenSocial widgets to Facebook before they reach MySpace, thus demonstrating the power of technology over business politics.This can be seen as a ‘petition’ to Facebook to open up once they’ve had a chance to evaluate OpenSocial.

  While this is a really nifty idea, when it comes down to it there aren’t a whole lot of OpenSocial widgets in existence and as pointed out on the OpenSocket site there are some technical issues around where widgets are hosted that still needs to be addressed. Best of luck to them though, it’s a really cool project. Hopefully they’ll realize the opportunity in developing the reverse version that would allow the thousands of Facebook applications plug into a wrapper that makes them compatible with OpenSocial. Now that would be huge.

Brilliant title, eh? Well, it’s true.

Google launched OpenSocial late last week to a lot of fanfare in the blog-o-sphere. If you subscribe to any feeds related to the web, or specifically social media, you would have seen it mentioned a lot. Probably had you wondering what all the buzz was about — like, why is everybody making such a big deal over this?

Well, Jeremiah Owyang did a good job of explaining the whole OpenSocial concept in executive (i.e. layman) terms, but if you can’t be bothered to read his post here’s why OpenSocial matters:

1. For developers like 76design, we can build widgets (i.e. mini applications) that will run seamlessly on a huge number of social networks without us having to learn how to make them work on each one individually.
2. More importantly though, with the trend towards company websites becoming their own micro social networks and the transition from desktop to browser OpenSocial defines a standard so that those that create content can take advantage of the extra functionality and features that widgets can bring in a very easy way. Ultimately, we build it and you reap the rewards by having a more engaging website that uses social networking practices to bring together your customers, employees and prospects — and you’re creating the conversation.

The web is being widget-ized and OpenSocial is a major step towards making it a level playing field where those that build widgets and those that use widgets can do so much more effectively and be able to tap into a lot of existing networks with a lot less effort. It’s still early on, but it’s pretty clear that OpenSocial has the potential to have a major impact on the social web. And you know that with Google behind the wheel, it will be widely adopted and has little chance of failing. The only question is how soon will it start realize some of its potential.
For the next little while we’re going to be collecting what we deem to be important resources, articles and discussions about OpenSocial and sharing them here on shift+control. Here’s a few that I came across in the last couple of days:

• Netvibes unveils Social Widgets and its next release called Ginger
  Netvibes, a provider of widget-based personalized start pages, are proposing their Universal Widget API as a way to address the issue of developing widget containers.
• OpenSocial Hacked Again
  In addition to this latest hack, TechCrunch reported an earlier one late last week. While the hacks were relatively harmless and don’t appear to reveal any flaws in OpenSocial itself, it’s clear that these developers were keen to be out there before anybody else and should ensure that they are taking the necessary security measures when building applications.
• Lending Club and OpenSocial: Striving to Make Social Networks more Useful
  Interesting perspective on the potential of OpenSocial from a truly social company, Lending Club, who started out as a Facebook app and then moved onto the wide open internet. You can really see how companies like Lending Club are poised to take full advantage of this new standard.