Hey Gary,
It kind of makes sense when your familiar with the history of OpenSocial,
first we had a JavaScript API (gadgets) and people who offered that API
("containers" as we call them), and then we added a REST API to allow for
all kinda of nifty things like using OpenSocial on mobile devices and/or in
server to server situations. Add some OAuth and OpenID to the mix, and
Google Friend Connect became possible, as well as many other interesting
applications.
You can really pick whatever makes sense to you. For people who have a great
idea it's a real time saver to make a social app, so you don't have to
attract an audience to your site, deal with advertising, writing login
handlers, a cms, etc etc.. Simple write an OpenSocial app, and put it on the
existing social sites and leverage their existing user base.
If you have a site where you would like to add social too it, if you have
the resources and technical know-how, using shindig gives you all the
freedom and flexibility you want, but again it does take a bit of work ..
For people who don't have the time, resources or background to do that,
FriendConnect is an amazing option, cut and paste some html and your already
a social site that can host OpenSocial apps, using GFC's login , friend
lists and posting activities back to those social networking sites (so their
friends see it, and visit your site too, great way to make the attention
circle connect).
And indeed, as the last option, using what we often refer to as "The Open
Stack", a combination of various technologies allowing people to
authenticate, grant access and retrieve social information in a portable and
open way (meaning "Open" as in: open source, open spec & open specification
processes) with technologies like OpenID for identity, OAuth for granting
access to resources, and PortableContacts and/or OpenSocial for social
information (friend lists, activities, messages, etc);
An example of such server to server scenario would be, well say that you had
a site with movie quotes ranked by popularity .. using OAuth and
OpenSocial's people end point, you could import someone's friend list and
show not only the general ratings, but also the much more valuable and
interesting ratings and comments of your friends.
Friend Connect in it's self is indeed also a great example of how to use
these technologies, OpenID (& a few others) for identity, OAuth for
permission, and OpenSocial's people and activities end points for as the
data exchange standard.
A fun resource to learn a bit more about what's happening in this 'Open
Stack' area is "the social web tv": http://thesocialweb.tv/
On Thu, Feb 12, 2009 at 10:54 PM, Gary <gary.freder...@jsoft.com> wrote:
>
> Great post,
>
> Are the 4 options in a faq?
> Is Friend Connect an example of option 3?
>
> and I wasv also feeling somewhat deflated. We have some small social
> groups, mostly mailing lists with some stuff on web pages and getting
> them more social sounds like a good idea. I tried Friend Connect and
> it went well to build a few hello world kinds of examples.
>
> I was about to install shindig (php version for that first test) but
> now think I need to also look more at OpenID and OAuth.
>
> Lots to look into.
>
> Gary
>
>
> >
>
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