What Does OpenSocial Mean to Real Estate?

By Drew Meyers | November 2, 2007

By now, many of you have probably heard of OpenSocial (part of the reason Google’s stock is now above $700). OpenSocial is said to be Google’s answer to Facebook and has been all over the blogosphere the last several days. What exactly is it?

OpenSocial provides a common set of APIs for social applications across multiple websites. With standard JavaScript and HTML, developers can create apps that access a social network’s friends and update feeds.

In simple terms - it’s a standardized way to create widgets across many platforms.

To me, this seems like an incredible improvement in efficiency for web developers — developers will no longer have to write different code to enable widgets to work on different sites. Supposedly, now developers will be to “write once, run anywhere.” There are a slew of partners sites who are adopting the technology — including Myspace, Bebo, SixApart, LinkedIn, hi5, Friendster, Plaxo and Ning (full list). Facebook is not currently onboard, but is considering adopting the APIs.

For those web developers reading this, here is the documentation for the APIs.

I’ll just throw several questions out there to get you thinking — What will be the 1st real estate specific widgets that will be built using the new APIs? How can OpenSocial add value to the current real estate home buying process? Will individual real estate professionals integrate this technology into their own websites? And finally, what does OpenSocial mean to real estate 2.0?

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