Sliding Into OpenSocial at MySpace

I belong to a number of online social networks. Many to get a better understanding of how they work, some because of my involvement with activities pertaining to them, a few based on the local community and occasionally because I simply find them fun.

Facebook is fun. Though for me, it generally means a lot of activity with very little practicality. A rich environment where quizzes are taken, simple gifts are given, contests are launched and cake is thrown.

The reason for this is a wealth of widgets, applets, gizmos or whatever small embedded application name you wish to give them. Not that you are getting anything done with them, but they are like the nudge, wink, chuck on the arm or other gesture of friendship you might make to someone you know.

One of the primary suppliers of these applications (and some practical ones as well) is the company Slide. According to Slide...

Slide products -- including Slideshow, FunWall and SuperPoke -- are popular on the world's top social networking and blog platforms.... Slide is also the leading application provider on Facebook with more than 50 million unique users each month (Quantcast). The company launched in 2005 and was founded by PayPal co-founder Max Levchin.

Yesterday, Slide announced that it will launch several new applications, including Slide FunWall and Slide SuperPoke, on MySpace. MySpace considers itself "the world's most popular social network." This follows on the announced Developer Platform that MySpace announced. Slide utilized this platform through the tools available at http://developer.myspace.com).
It runs on OpenSocial, with MySpace extensions to enable javascript and html, as well as REST for server-to-server communication. OpenSocial, whichi is currently being developed by Google in conjunction with members of the web community, is built upon Google Gadget technology. According to Google's web site, "The ultimate goal is for any social website to be able to implement the APIs and host 3rd party social applications."

On the same day as the Slide, MySpace announcement, Google also launched it's free Team Edition of Apps.