Why you should pay attention to the OpenSocial movement

Last fall, Google announced the OpenSocial standard. Let me spend a few moments explaining what exactly that is, and why it will be important to your business in the future.

The OpenSocial movement is based on the belief that users should be able to distribute content across the Web's many manifestions (blogs, social networks, mobile phones, etc.), as opposed to accessing it only via one central website.

Lots of other companies have joined the movement along with Google: MySpace, LinkedIn, Plaxo and SixApart, to name a few.

We've always thought of the corporate website as THE one-stop destination for all of our prospects and existing customers. With the onset of embeddable YouTube videos and RSS feeds, we saw that if the content is good enough, others will distribute it. OpenSocial is simply the next step of this evolution.

Let's say you've created a little interactive Flash game on your website. It's branded with your identity, it's engaging, and you want your visitors to play around with it. Three years ago this was called "sticky" content, thinking that users should be given incentive to "stick around" and come back to websites. Today, OpenSocial allows you to offer that game for anyone to grab and post inside their blog or their personal Myspace/Facebook page. Remember, your customer can also be your distributor.

Another great thing about the OpenSocial movement: If you want your content to easily "snap in" to all of these various spaces, why should your developers have to learn programming languages that are specific to each platform? They could spend hours learning how to develop something inside Facebook, then duplicate that time by re-creating the same initiative for MySpace. That's a lot of wasted time. OpenSocial gives us a common set of tools - learn it once, apply it everywhere.

Don't feel like you need to go out and learn everything about the OpenSocial movement today. Just keep it in your web strategy toolbox as your company's web content evolves. In fact, if you've ever read a blog's RSS feed, embedded a YouTube video, or sent a link to your friend, you're already a pioneer in this movement!

Graphic credit: Google