OpenSocial is really OpenWidgets

Steve O'Hear picks up on Marc Canter's position that OpenSocial is anything but data-portability and is in fact more akin to a widget standardizing scheme. Not that I an argue with that, but if we want to standardize widgets, I believe we'd be better off working from the ground up rather than getting suckered by a Google et al inspired bit of marketing flammery.

OpenSocial should be renamed “OpenGadgets”

As it stands, the Google-led OpenSocial has very little, if anything, to do with data portability. That’s the view of Marc Canter, a long time advocate of open standards and data portability, and one in which I’m inclined to agree. It seems that almost everybody got a little carried away about what OpenSocial really stands for, falling for Google’s attempt to outmaneuver Facebook and paint the latter as the big bad wolf of data lock-in. Except OpenSocial isn’t really designed to give users the ability to move their data from one social network to another. Instead, it’s about standardizing the development of ‘widgets’ (sometimes also called ‘gadgets’), mini-apps that can interact with a subset of data on each of the supported social networking sites.

Comments

[william]

If Google and the other OpenSocial coalition of the willing are so much about "Opening" up...How about as a first step everyone excepting openid as a log in ?

Oh and how about having someone involved that represent the members that create the value of these companies that want to be more "Open"