There was an announcement of a open standard for coding when dealing with social networking sites. Lead by Google, LinkedIn is one of the friends. I believe MySpace decided a day later to join in.

Any views about the convergence of social networking? Though the focus is on the developers the benefit of OpenSocial is to make it easier for people to create bridges between various sites. Services that build on what is already there. Like when a property management website uses Google maps to show where the houses are that from a comp or where the available rentals are.

As Josh and company have been producing widgets for the Mac and a tool for Facebook will OpenSocial make it easier to network, easier to figure out who to partner with for a RE deal, easier to stay on top of deals and other things.

There is a video on the Google site where they introduce the concept and then explain to a group of developers how things will work.

Google the following terms to get to the specific page:
opensocial code google

The link to the video should be there.

There is a Wired online article that speculates the Google announcement is a focused effort to break the Facebook closed model of the net. Facebook wants to control their community or otherwise keep it closed. OpenSocial wants to leverage what all the different sites do but to not lock people into one community or way of organizing information.

My world view of Web 2.0:

I like to use Plaxo as LinkedIn does a poor job of handing contact details. I like BP for RE information but the Motley Fool for UK RE info. I like other sites for what they do well yet I do not want to keep loading my address book to reconnect networks if I could just use the network I already have. I want to use email and remember past conversations rather than have multiple PM systems with snippets of my prior conversations. I had a community on tribe.net but that site really collapsed. I use other sites for specific purposes but still would rather have the more complete picture.

What do others think of the future of Web 2.0, social networking and doing deals. One comment made early on the video is OpenSocial is an effort to bring business networking together. LinkedIn sorts of things but with more of the MySpace growth is my take on the message.

To the Realtors in the room. Does it matter if more people can easily network and know what is out there in the market? Is the internet going to replace the MLS so that only agents who add value have a future? The exclusivity of the MLS being of diminishing value? Like commercial brokers who have not had a MLS until Loopnet came around?

I am hoping we will get an interesting discussing rolling.

John Corey